Rob Pruitt and Master of Ceremonies Glenn O'Brien at Webster Hall for Rob Pruitt's 2010 Art Awards Photo: Roger Kisby © The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation

Rob Pruitt's 2010 Art Awards Rob Pruitt and Master of Ceremonies Glenn O'Brien at Webster Hall for Rob Pruitt's 2010 Art Awards Photo: Roger Kisby © The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation

Rob Pruitt has teamed up with writer-editor and art world veteran Glenn O’Brien to host the second annual Rob Pruitt’s 2010 Art Awards on December 8, 2010 at Webster Hall. Pruitt considers the event a performance-based artwork that parodies self-congratulatory Hollywood awards ceremonies, while relishing his own role as ringmaster and host. Other presenters will include critic Jerry Saltz (of the TV show Work of Art), Mary Heilmann, the 2009 “Artist of the Year,” Marina Abramovic, and John Currin among others.

The awards ceremony honours the stalwarts of the art world, who are mostly hand-picked by him, while benefitting the Guggenheim Foundation and the not-for-profit, White Columns.  And this year, the Lifetime Achievement Awards is going to… Jonas Mekas and Martha Rosler, and The Artist-Educator Achievement Award, a new category, will be presented to Marilyn Minter.

Rob Pruitt's 2010 Art Awards Rob Pruitt and Master of Ceremonies Glenn O'Brien at Webster Hall for Rob Pruitt's 2010 Art Awards Photo: Roger Kisby © The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation

According to the Guggenheim’s press release over a 1,000 individuals from the art world participate in the nomination process and the categories and nominees are:

Alternative Space of the Year
179 Canal, New York
Artists Space, New York
Cleopatra’s, Brooklyn, New York
Light Industry, Brooklyn, New York

Alternative Project of the Year
Apartment Show, various locations, New York
edia Int’l Group, Foundation Barbin, New York
INDEPENDENT, New York
Jennifer Rubell, Creation, Performa 09, New York

Artist of the Year
Marina Abramovic
John Baldessari
Louise Bourgeois
Trisha Donnelly

Blogger or Critic of the Year
Howard Halle
Paddy Johnson
Jerry Saltz
Linda Yablonsky

Curator of the Year
Massimiliano Gioni
Laura Hoptman
Chrissie Iles
Neville Wakefield

Exhibition outside the United States
John Baldessari: Pure Beauty, Tate Modern, London
Rosemarie Trockel: Deliquescence of the Mother, Kunsthalle Zürich
Felix Gonzalez-Torres: Specific Objects without Specific Form, Wiels Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels
Matthew Barney: Prayer Sheet with the Wound and the Nail, Schaulager, Basel

Group Show of the Year, Gallery
Lush Life, various locations, New York
Picture Industry (Goodbye to All That), Regen Projects, Los Angeles
Primary Atmospheres: Works from California 1960–1970, David Zwirner, New York
Your History Is Not Our History: New York in the 1980s, Haunch of Venison, New York

Group Show of the Year, Museum
At Home/Not At Home: Works from the Collection of Martin and Rebecca Eisenberg, Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York
Greater New York, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, New York
In & Out of Amsterdam: Travels in Conceptual Art, 1960–1976, Museum of Modern Art, New York
2010 Whitney Biennial Exhibition, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

New Artist of the Year
Michele Abeles
Tauba Auerbach
Liz Magic Laser
Ryan McNamara

The Rob Pruitt Award
To be announced the evening of December 8, 2010

Solo Show of the Year, Gallery
Claude Monet: Late Work, Gagosian Gallery, New York
Gelitin: Blind Sculpture, Greene Naftali Gallery, New York
Jonathan Horowitz: Go Vegan! Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New York
Trisha Donnelly, Casey Kaplan Gallery, New York

Solo Show of the Year, Museum
Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present, Museum of Modern Art, New York
Heat Waves in a Swamp: The Paintings of Charles Burchfield, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
Otto Dix, Neue Galerie, New York
Yves Klein: With the Void, Full Powers, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

Rob Pruitt’s 2010 Art Awards, Wednesday, December 8, 2010, 7-8 pm: Red carpet arrivals and cocktail reception, 8-10 pm: Awards ceremony and dinner. Webster Hall, 125 East 11th Street, New York City

Gavin Brown's Enterprise transformed

On Saturday night, Gavin Brown’s West Village Enterprise played host to the launch of Rob Pruitt’s first collective monograph, Pop Touched Me. A Barbour-clad Pruitt sat perched behind a table, taking up to five minutes to personalize each patron’s book (while an annoyed Brown shouted at him to “hurry it along”). A pack of gum was an essential prop, as he chewed a new piece for each book, spitting it into the title page and, folding it over so as not to stick, inscribed, “My DNA” above.

“Thomas,

Thanks for the support, I want to fuck you.

-Rob,” read one personalized inscription.

In between signings, Pruitt rationalized the copious testimonials lining the pages of his book: “I knew that I didn’t want to have an essay by some big, fancy art writer saying, ‘Oh, this work is just so fabulous, it’s been overlooked for the past twenty years.’ Something that I’d essentially have to pay for that would flop up my position in the art world so, instead, I asked two hundred or so associates—people I have done projects with over the years—to write something heartfelt about me. Some of the things are nice and some aren’t so nice, but I think that it’s a really clear message about what it is that I do.” Marc Jacobs, Jeff Koons, and John Waters are just a handful of those you can expect to find hiding in the pages, renouncing and praising the artist’s artist.

Jeffrey Deitch, who leaves for the west coast June 1^st to clean house at MOCA, was one such friend and collaborator on hand to pay homage to Pruitt’s career. “Rob has been an inspiration for me for years. I’ve known him since the beginning. I knew him when he was a gallery assistant at Sonnabend because I was always there with Jeff Koons and Rob was always coming out of the back room. I’ve followed him from the very beginning as he followed his vision as an artist and I was there for all the ups and the downs, too.”

In 1985, when billionaire Greek industrialist Dakis Joannou bought the first piece of his now world-renowned contemporary art collection—a basketball signed by Dr. Jay submerged in a tank of water and simply titled “Equilibrium”—it started two chain reactions. One, Mr. Koons would never have to worry about people buying his work again, as Jonnau has been very successful in buying up most of it for his monolithic museum in Athens. Secondly, Joannou would be very adept in helping to solidify emerging artists and future greats (Terrence Koh, Cindy Sherman, Takashi Murakami), as well as helping to shape the very nature of collecting.

And thus, in the middle of last week, the world got the first look at Jeff Koons’ curatorial debut: “Skin Fruit: Selections for the Dakis Joannou Collection.” On how he chose the pieces for the exhibition, Koons told SPREAD ArtCulture: “I did everything very intuitively. I’ve known Dakis since 1985, and from meeting with him and following the collection from that time, I just wanted to try and capture what I felt represented his interests and his ambition and broadness in collecting contemporary art…but very intuitively.”

SPREAD ArtCulture: Is this your first of many curating efforts?

Jeff Koons: I think artists always curate their own work, but I have an Ed Paschke show that will open in about two weeks that I will curate that I brought together. But it’s like anything: When you’re creating an artwork, you’re just following your interests, and in curating, it’s the same thing. But it’s intuitive, there’s a lot of great work. Some of the best art pieces, some of the best works in the collection, aren’t here. Maybe they’re on loan or it’s an artist’s work that didn’t it within this context of looking at the body.

SAC: How did you choose the pieces in this show and under what context?

JK: It’s just my intuition. I would go through the collection and choose works that I felt represented Dakis’s desire with the collection, and I would go back through and go over them again, and I would find that I was always coming up with the same things. And I made models of the museum; I would lay things out and they developed their own relationships, and it’s just the same when you’re following your own ideas and creating your own works that this happens. It got to a point where if I would try and move something on one of the floors, and take it from one location to another, for me, it just wouldn’t work.

Some of the artists we were able to speak to at the opening, such as Terence Koh, were far less articulate about their involvement in the show:

A sculpture by Terence Koh

SPREAD ArtCulture: Tell me about your involvement in Skin Fruit.

Terence Koh: I was just chosen.

SAC: What are you working on now?

TK: Drinking water.

Koh was the only artist to have sculptures, as well as paintings, in the show.

Some patrons, such as the Chelsea behemoth Tony Shafrazi, were able to weigh in with the learned authority of and award-winning curator (Shafrazi was the recipient of Rob Pruitt’s “Best Group Show” in 2009 at the first ever Art Awards):

"Noodles" by Urs Fischer

SPREAD ArtCulture: What do you think of the show?

Tony Shafrazi: I love the show! I think it’s an eclectic wonderful representation of what’s going on. Dakis is a great collector, and has been for many years, and you see such a great mixture of young, new work, such as been selected from a great many things. I love this Fischer piece right here (Urs Fischer’s “Noodles”), don’t you just love it? It’s one of my favorite pieces in the place. Every piece in here is interesting.

Charles Ray's "Aluminum Girl"

"Fall '91" by Charles Ray (foreground); Terence Koh's "Chocolate Mountains" (background)

Charles Ray's "Revolution Counter-Revolution"

A piece by Downtown favorite and partner of the late Dash Snow, Dan Colen

Dan Altmejd's calamitous "Giant"

Maurizio Cattelan's very bland and largely pedantic "All," an eight-piece installation featuring life-size body bags carved from Carrara marble

"Untitled (Jack)" by Paul McCarthy, which could be a prop straight out of Kubrick

A wonderfully whimsical and weird colloboration by the team of Paul McCarthy and Paula Jones

A wonderfully whimsical and weird colloboration by the team of Paul McCarthy and Paula Jones

There seemed to be a very even split among opening-night patrons as to whether or not the show was a success. Check it out for yourself until June 6th and let us know what you think.

DENIM – Curated by David Rimanelli

I once asked shuttle loomer and denim aficionado Matt Weintraub to explain, in as few words as possible, what was behind the complex mystique fueling the denim craze. He wrote me, “I prefer my denim raw, thick, and selvage. Raw means the denim has not been pre-distressed. It’s going to get beat up over time. Every crease, bend, and crinkle is going to reflect your personal story. Whiskers will build, honeycombs will form, and edges will wear. But this is exactly as it should be, as each fade and tear will remind you of where you’ve been.”

Succinct, he was not, but this opened my eyes as to how serious denimphiles take their jeans. Weintraub takes his denim seriously, and his eyes lit up when I asked what the difference between Levis and Samurai was. ”Thick means the denim is heavyweight,” he told me. “They stock denim that’s 13, 17, 19, 21, or even 24 ounces. Thinner denim is fine for the summer and breaks in quicker, but I find that the best things take time. The heavier the denim, the longer it’s going to take to fade. Fortunately, for your effort you will be rewarded. Thicker, unwashed denim is going to be stiffer. It may even stand up on it’s own. This means that when it does crease and wrinkle, the wear will become clearly apparent. When it’s done, and you’ve finally given them a first wash 6 months or a year later, you’ll reveal a rich contrast. This is something you’ve got to work for. You can’t buy it off the rack.”

DENIM – Curated by David Rimanelli

80WSE, NYU’s art gallery that recently played host to Charlie White’s brazen “A Selection From the Teen and the Transgender Comparative Study,” is now home to DENIM, curated by David Rimanelli. Rimanelli, a renowned art critic, member of the NYU faculty, and contributing editor to Artforum since 1997, has combined works of  Andy Warhol, Rob Pruitt, Tom Burr, Valie, Export, K8 Hardy, Hanna Liden, Klara Liden, Jack Pierson, Michael Smith, Karlheinz Weinberger, and Knut Asdam into this retrospective work that pays homage to a symbol as American as television, binge-eating, and white sneakers.

Of his show, Rimanelli writes,”Denim’s cult status as a rebel uniform emerged in the public mind largely through classic Hollywood cinema—for instance, Marlon Brando in The Wild One, James Dean in Rebel without a Cause, and Marilyn Monroe in The Misfits, and later as the preferred style for certain subcultures, for example, gay subculture, as can be seen in Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising and Kustom Kar Kommandos; or, returning to Hollywood, William Friedkin’s controversial Cruising.

“DENIM, these cinematic references commingle with denim’s ‘high-art’ associations, which have become ingrained through the sixties image of the ‘artist-worker,’ exemplified by minimalists like Robert Morris, or by Carl Andre, habitually attired in overalls. Andy Warhol is a key figure in this respect, both in his own sartorial inclinations but particularly in his art and films.”

DENIM – Curated by David Rimanelli

Regardless of your level of interest in the differences of selvedge or acid-washed jeans, the exhibit is masterfully curated, as one would expect from Mr. Rimanelli. It is running through March 12th.

]]> http://www.spreadartculture.com/2010/02/04/denim-%e2%80%93-curated-by-david-rimanelli/feed/ 0 http://www.spreadartculture.com/2009/12/29/life-imitating-art-comedys-newest-ensemble-takes-dead-aim-on-the-art-world/ http://www.spreadartculture.com/2009/12/29/life-imitating-art-comedys-newest-ensemble-takes-dead-aim-on-the-art-world/#comments Wed, 30 Dec 2009 01:31:47 +0000 Jonathan http://www.spreadartculture.com/?p=694 By JRS

The Delusional Downtown Divas: Lena Dunham, Joana D’Avillez, and Isabel Halley

Getting all the Delusional Downtown Divas together in one room is a lot like herding cats. Nothing against the Divas, certainly, and nothing against cats, for that matter, but when it comes to the schedules of New York’s three most in-demand young performance artists, saying they’re spread thin is a bit of an understatement.

The trio of early-twentysomething gals first got on SPREAD ArtCulture’s radar in October at Rob Pruitt’s Art Awards at the Guggenheim. Acting at the event’s masters of ceremonies, they presented skits that poked fun at the very world they grew up in and have come to embody: New York’s highbrow art community. The downtown scenesters all have roots in the downtown art community, coming from parents who are painters, writers, and photographers. It’s only natural that they’d try to carve out their own niche into a world that’s shown them so much affection. Lucky for us, that happens to be creating a hilarious parody of the world that looks so very ridiculous as an outsider looking in.
Delusional Downtown Divas chronicles the adventures of Oona, Swann, and AgNess, three young women “hungry for art-world stardom but comically unaware of how to reach their goal of stylish domination. The DDD’s are downtown natives, living in AgNess’ father’s Tribeca loft. They spend their days changing outfits every few minutes and plotting about out how to worm their way back into the art world they were raised in—but now they’re adult women with professional aspirations, not just kids stealing pretzels from Leo Castelli’s gallery kitchen.” Spearheaded by the effervescent and imaginative Lena Dunham, is a wildly popular web series that embodies the personas the girls have created for our amusement. They ask performance artist Joan Jonas how she knows when she performing from when she’s just walking down the street. They pose Isaac Mizrahi with the “meaning of life” conundrum, which he answers,”Don’t panic…or panic. That’s the meaning of life. Maybe if you talk to me, that’s the meaning of life.”

The new season gives us Jerry Saltz commenting on the mozzarella sandwich he’s eating. This shows us the simplistic and effective genius of these three budding writers and performers: they break down the influential and cerebral minds and end up having them play along for us, whether they’re aware of their inner brilliance or not. Armed with a sense of renegade resourcefulness and the refusal to take no for an answer, the Divas are able to mold conversations to fill any void. They’re definitely on our list to watch out for in 2010.

Delusional Downtown Divas Episode 1

The Pruitt Award Is an empty champagne bottle surrounded by plastic ice, which is also a fully functioning lamp.

Was the art world ready for its Oscar moment? Regardless of that answer, the first annual Art Awards presented by Rob Pruitt took place last night in the Guggenheim’s rotunda.

A few choice members of the Hollywood glitterati (Kylie Mingoue, Julianne Moore, James Franco) blended into triviality among the bevy of art celebrities that were in attendance. As an extra perquisite, Rob Pruitt recruited as emcees the Delusional Downtown Divas, a satiric troupe of young, hipster women with an art-world pedigree (and a winsome schoolgirl crush on fellow presenter Jeffrey Deitch). In videos interspersed between the presentations, the Divas schemed to infiltrate the art establishment by any means possible. In one segment that was an animated homage to From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, they pitched a tent in the Guggenheim, doing their laundry and shaving their legs in the lobby fountain. In another, they made a pilgrimage to the downtown studio of a wryly shamanic Joan Jonas, deadpanning, “How do you know when you’re performing and when you’re just walking down the street?”

Ms. Jonas took home a lifetime achievement award, as did the curator Kasper Konig. Since the main categories weren’t split along the lines of actor/actress, everyone was keeping an eye on the gender balance, though, in the end, the women nominees ended up taking the majority of the awards home.

The Delusional Downtown Divas and Rob Pruitt

The Kanye-West moment of the evening was undoubtedly art vandal-turned gallery owner Tony Shafrazi’s acceptance speech for Best Group Show of the Year for Who’s Afraid of Jasper Johns? Upon taking the stage, Mr. Shafrazi narrowly escaped being pummeled with a dinner roll. His speech was peppered with jeers from spectators, clearly mesmerized by his egregiously narcissistic discourse, “I’ve probably known for a long time that I was great. This award comes as no great surprise to me.” Known more for his scandalous track record than his curatorial capabilities, Shafrazi was arrested in 1974 for spray painting “Kill Lies All” on Picasso’s Guernica when it was on display in the Museum of Modern Art. On the matter of destroying a priceless work of art, he says “I wanted to bring the art absolutely up to date, to retrieve it from art history and give it life. Maybe that’s why the Guernica action remains so difficult to deal with. I tried to trespass beyond that invisible barrier that no one is allowed to cross; I wanted to dwell within the act of the painting’s creation, get involved with the making of the work, put my hand within it and by that act encourage the individual viewer to challenge it, deal with it and thus see it in its dynamic raw state as it was being made, not as a piece of history.” And this was only one of the evening’s colorful winners/presenters.

The 200 guests enjoyed a seated three-course dinner that accompanied the show, and resulted in sucking a lot of energy out of the room, as did the monotone and banal acceptance speeches that seemed to drag on endlessly, the background music to cut long speeches short seemingly overlooked. Guests perked up briefly when Mr. Pruitt bestowed the “The Rob Pruitt Award,” voted on by a committee of one. It went to the artist Cynthia Plaster Caster, who has been making casts of rock stars’ genitalia for decades and is the subject of an upcoming documentary. Ms. Plaster Caster brandished her masterpiece, the Jimi Hendrix, on the podium as Mr. Pruitt giggled, confident that though first awards shows can be bumpy, he had successfully negotiated his way through the ceremony and had begun paving the way for next year. You could see him stealthily reclaiming ownership of the event, reminding guests that the art world will never take itself as seriously as Hollywood.

The final list of winners is:

• Artist of the Year: Mary Heilmann
• Curator of the Year: Connie Butler
• Exhibition Outside the United States: Jeff Koons, Versailles, Château de Versailles, France
• Group Show of the Year, Gallery: Who’s Afraid of Jasper Johns? Tony Shafrazi Gallery, New York
• Group Show of the Year, Museum: The Pictures Generation, 1974–1984, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
• New Artist of the Year: Ryan Trecartin
• The Rob Pruitt Award: Cynthia Plaster Caster
• Solo Show of the Year, Gallery: Manzoni: A Retrospective, Gagosian Gallery, New York
• Solo Show of the Year, Museum: Martin Kippenberger: The Problem Perspective, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and Museum of Modern Art, New York
• Writer of the Year: Jerry Saltz

Rob Pruitt and the Delusional Downtown Divas

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum recently announced with event partner Calvin Klein Collection a new art event premiering in 2009: Rob Pruitt’s The First Annual Art Awards at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in Association with White Columns, to be held on Thursday, October 29, 2009.

Artist Rob Pruitt, whose conceptual practice is rooted in a pop sensibility and a playful critique of art world structures, has conceived the event as a performance-based artwork which follows the format of a Hollywood awards ceremony. The Art Awards will be an annual celebration of select individuals, exhibitions, and projects that have made a significant impact on the field of contemporary art during the previous year, specifically, for this year’s ceremony, from January 2008 to June 2009.

According to Mr. Pruitt, “This annual gesture will function as a community-building and philanthropic event for the Guggenheim Museum, White Columns and, in 2009, Studio in a School, while simultaneously mobilizing the wide ranging talents and energies of the international arts community, focusing on our mutual admiration and support for one another’s unique endeavors.” Mr. Pruitt continued, “With one eye on supporting our great institutions, and the other on injecting our community with a renewed sense of energy, spirit, and a dash of showbiz glamour, we are pleased to announce this very unique event.”

Richard Armstrong, Director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and Museum, stated, “As the impresario behind the First Annual Art Awards, Rob Pruitt presents a daring new event model injected with the humor that underscores his work. Pruitt’s orchestration of this performative piece—with the rotunda as center stage—is aligned with the Guggenheim’s mission to continue to engage and present contemporary artists.”

“The First Annual Art Awards, held at the Guggenheim Museum, will celebrate today’s most interesting and respected artists, in an entirely innovative way,” said Malcolm Carfrae, EVP Global Communications, Calvin Klein, Inc. “Calvin Klein, Inc. has always been a huge supporter of the arts and we are thrilled to be a part of such a groundbreaking event that celebrates the arts community and gives it the recognition it deserves.”

Pruitt has invited the Delusional Downtown Divas to preside over the event as Masters of Ceremonies, and Glenn O’Brien will step in as the Announcer, or, as Pruitt describes his role, as “the Voice of God.” An additional distinguished list of presenters will participate in distributing the awards, created by Pruitt to resemble a celebratory bucket of champagne that also serves as a fully functional lamp. The presenters will include Cecily Brown, Sofia Coppola, James Franco, Knight Landesman, Nate Lowman, and Mary-Kate Olsen, among others. Original music has been composed by Matthew Friedberger of the Fiery Furnaces, who will perform at the event. Christine Muhlke, food editor of the New York Times Magazine, is curating the cuisine for the seated dinner.

Lifetime Achievement Awards, determined by Rob Pruitt along with organizing partners the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and White Columns, will be awarded to Joan Jonas and Kasper König. In addition, a group of more than four hundred art world professionals has been invited to form a Nominating Council that will select four nominees in nine categories that focus primarily on exhibitions and projects that took place over the preceding eighteen months (January 2008 to June 2009), in the United States, as well as one category recognizing an international exhibition. The Rob Pruitt Award is being decided solely by the artist. Of the following list of nominees, a larger group (including the Nominating Council) will establish the eventual winners, who will be announced at the live awards ceremony on October 29. The ten categories—in addition to the Lifetime Achievement Award—and the nominees for each category are:

Artist of the Year
• Louise Bourgeois
• Urs Fischer
• Dan Graham
• Mary Heilmann

Curator of the Year
• Klaus Biesenbach
• Daniel Birnbaum
• Connie Butler
• Massimiliano Gioni

Exhibitions Outside the United States
• Francis Bacon, Tate Britain, London
• Jeff Koons, Versailles, Château de Versailles, France
• Mike Kelley: Educational Complex Onwards: 1995–2008, Wiels Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels
• Wolfgang Tillmans: Lighter, Hamburger Bahnhof, Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin

Group Show of the Year, Gallery
• A Twilight Art, Harris Lieberman, New York
• Who’s Afraid of Jasper Johns? Tony Shafrazi Gallery, New York
• Your Gold Teeth II, Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York
• ZERO in New York, Sperone Westwater, New York

Group Show of the Year, Museum
• After Nature, New Museum, New York
• The Pictures Generation, 1974–1984, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
• The Quick and the Dead, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis
• WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution, P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, New York

New Artist of the Year
• Elad Lassry
• Daniel McDonald
• Marlo Pascual
• Ryan Trecartin

The Rob Pruitt Award
• To be announced the evening of October 29, 2009

Solo Show of the Year, Gallery
• Cindy Sherman, Metro Pictures, New York
• Manzoni: A Retrospective, Gagosian Gallery, New York
• Paul Sharits, Greene Naftali Gallery, New York
• Picasso: Mosqueteros, Gagosian Gallery, New York

Solo Show of the Year, Museum
• Dan Graham: Beyond, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
• Lawrence Weiner: As Far as the Eye Can See, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
• Live Forever: Elizabeth Peyton, New Museum, New York
• Martin Kippenberger: The Problem Perspective, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and Museum of Modern Art, New York

Writer of the Year
• Tim Griffin
• John Kelsey
• Walter Robinson
• Jerry Saltz