Nominations for the 2018 Sobey Art Award open on Tuesday, January 30, 2018. The annual prize is presented to a Canadian artist age 40 or under who has exhibited in a public or commercial art gallery within 18 months of being nominated. The deadline for artists’ nominations is March 2, 2018.
Created in 2002 by the Sobey Art Foundation, the Sobey Art Award represents unprecedented opportunities for Canadian contemporary artists, bringing them national and global recognition. The work of five finalists, representing five regions in Canada, selected from a longlist of 25 nominees is featured in a special exhibition that alternates between the National Gallery of Canada and other arts institutions across the country.
The Awards’ 2018 longlist of nominees will be announced April 17 and the shortlist will be released May 29. The exhibition of works by the five shortlisted artists will be presented at the National Gallery of Canada from October 3, 2018 to February 10, 2019. The winner of the 2018 Sobey Art Award will be announced at a gala at the National Gallery of Canada, in Ottawa, on November 14, 2018.
The 2018 international jury panel, chaired by National Gallery of Canada’s Senior Curator of Contemporary Art, Josée Drouin-Brisebois, is composed of curators from five designated regions in Canada (the Atlantic Provinces, Quebec, Ontario, the Prairies and the North, and the West Coast and Yukon) and one international juror.
For more information and nomination guidelines, please visit gallery.ca/sobey, or contact:
Sobey Art Award
c/o National Gallery of Canada
380 Sussex Drive
P.O. Box 427, Station A
Ottawa, ON K1N 9N4
About the Sobey Art Award process
The National Gallery of Canada will accept nominations for the 2018 Sobey Art Award from recognized agents and institutions. The curatorial jury panel will oversee the awards selection process. From the complete list of nominated artists, the jurors will create a longlist of five artists from each region. The panel will then choose one representative from each region to be included on the national shortlist and in the 2018 Sobey Art Award exhibition. The panel will also select the winner of the overall prize.
About the Sobey Art Foundation
The Sobey Art Foundation was established in 1981 with a mandate to carry on the work of entrepreneur and business leader, the late Frank H. Sobey, to collect and preserve representative examples of 19th and 20th century Canadian art. In one of the finest private collections of its kind, the Sobey Art Foundation has assembled outstanding examples from Canadian Masters such as Cornelius Krieghoff, Tom Thomson and J. E. H. MacDonald. The collection is on view in the former home of Frank Sobey and his wife Irene in Pictou County, Nova Scotia.
About the National Gallery of Canada
The National Gallery of Canada is home to the most important collections of historical and contemporary Canadian art. The Gallery also maintains Canada’s premier collection of European Art from the 14th to the 21st centuries, as well as important works of American, Asian and Indigenous Art and renowned international collections of prints, drawings and photographs. In 2015, the National Gallery of Canada established the Canadian Photography Institute, a global multidisciplinary research center dedicated to the history, evolution and future of photography. For more information, visit gallery.ca and follow us on Twitter.
For all media enquiries, please contact:
Josée-Britanie Mallet, Senior Media and Public Relations Officer
National Gallery of Canada
T +1 613 990 6835
bmallet [at] gallery.ca
Bernard Doucet
Sobey Art Foundation
T + 1 902 752 8371 ext. 2301
C + 1 902 921 1755 bernard.doucet [at] sobeys.com
