The Turner Prize, UK’s biggest annual art prize, has announced it will be dropping its under-fifty age limit. The £25,000-award was established in 1984 to honour a memorable presentation of work by a British or UK-based artist in that year, and the age limit was introduced in 1991 to avoid it becoming a recognition of ‘lifetime achievement’. However, Tate Britain director Alex Farquharson, who chairs the prize, feels that ‘now that its reputation is so firmly established, we want to acknowledge the fact that artists can experience a breakthrough in their work at any age.’
The jury for the 2018 prize has been announced as Elena Filipovic, director, Kunsthalle Basel; Lisa LeFeuvre, head of sculpture studies, Henry Moore Institute; Tom McCarthy, novelist and writer; and ArtReview‘s international editor Oliver Basciano.
ArtReview also has a presence on the 2017 jury in the form of associate editor Martin Herbert, who will judge the prize alongside Dan Fox, co-editor at Frieze; Mason Leaver-Yap, Walker Art Center’s Bentson Scholar of Moving Image in Minneapolis and director of LUX; and Emily Pethick, director, the Showroom, London. The 2017 Turner Prize will take place at the Ferens Art Gallery in Hull, from 26 September – 7 January.
29 March 2017