Sobey Art Award – About

The Sobey Art Award is the pre-eminent prize for Canadian artists 40 and under.

Presented annually, the Sobey Art Award celebrates some of our country’s most exciting young artists and provides them with significant financial support.

Previous to the 2020 edition of the Sobey Art Award, the program represented a total commitment of more than $650,000 (CAD) annually. In recent years, a total of $240,000 in prize money was awarded — including a top prize of $100,000 for the winner. Each of the four finalists received $25,000, and the other longlisted artists received $2,000 each. In addition to monetary awards, three artists from the longlist took part in the Sobey Art Award Residencies Program. Finally, one shortlist artist was selected by Fogo Island Arts to attend an annual residency.

Since it was created in 2001, the Sobey Art Award has had an undeniable impact on the careers of young Canadian contemporary artists. Within little more than a decade, the award and its attendant publicity have also boosted awareness of contemporary art in Canada and further afield.

Conventionally, each year a panel of curatorial advisors consisting of a noted gallery representative in each of five different regions — the West Coast and the Yukon, the Prairies and the North, Ontario, Quebec and the Atlantic Provinces — and an international juror, develops a longlist of 25 Canadian artists (five from each region). The panel then meets and chooses its shortlist, with one finalist from each region.

In 2020, these 25 exceptional Canadian artists will be awarded $25,000 (CAD) each. The National Gallery of Canada and the Sobey Art Foundation’s commitment is to return to a juried annual award as soon as public health guidelines enable us to do so, but for this year the shortlist artists exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada, the winners’ announcement gala, and the international residencies program have been suspended.

The 2020 Sobey Art Award is jointly administered by the National Gallery of Canada and the Sobey Art Foundation.

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History

The idea for the Sobey Art Award arose in 2001, when Donald R. Sobey — then-Chairman of both the Nova Scotia-based Sobey Art Foundation and the National Gallery of Canada Board of Trustees — spoke to former National Gallery Director Pierre Théberge about the Foundation sponsoring an art prize.

Given the lack of major contemporary art prizes in Canada at the time, Théberge was keen on the idea of an award that would raise the prestige and profile of contemporary art and the work of younger Canadian artists. Sobey agreed, and the Sobey Art Award was born.

Inaugurated in November 2001, the Sobey Art Award was administered for nearly 15 years by the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, which was instrumental in making the Award what it is today. Since the first award in 2002, it has highlighted the work of over 350 artists, with winners such as Abbas Akhavan, David Altmejd, Brian Jungen, Nadia Myre and Annie Pootoogook, among others. In December 2015, administration of the Sobey Art Award was transferred to the National Gallery of Canada.

On January 29, 2018, the Sobey Art Foundation announced major enhancements to the annual prize structure of the Sobey Art Award. An important gift by the Donald R. Sobey Foundation and re-investment from the Sobey Art Foundation will support targeted funds to directly benefit young Canadian artists through the Award. Learn more

Donald R. Sobey

About the Sobey Art Foundation

With a mandate to carry on the work of entrepreneur and business leader, the late Frank H. Sobey, the Sobey Art Foundation was established in 1981 to collect and preserve representative examples of 19th- and 20th-century Canadian art. The Foundation has since broadened its scope to support contemporary Canadian art through the Sobey Art Award. 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 housed at Crombie House, the former home of Frank Sobey and his wife Irene, in Pictou County, Nova Scotia, and is open to the public, free-of-charge.

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