One of the most ambitious prizes in the art world is calling for entries for 2023 with three prizes of €50,000 up for grabs. The Art Explora & Académie des Beaux-Arts European Prize, funded by European tech entrepreneur Frédéric Jousset, is open to all non-profit European cultural organisations.
“The European Prize encourages new forms of public engagement and participation in arts and culture, supporting innovative projects, in all art forms,” reads the prize rules. which also stipulate that “the prize must finance the establishment of a new project or the expansion of an existing project with a new dimension. It can cover investment or operating expenses.
Applications must be completed online between May 3 and September 11 at artexplora.org. Once the applications are closed, a pre-selection of 18 projects will be carried out by the Art Explora teams. A jury made up of nine people – four academics appointed by the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris, four experts appointed by Art Explora and the president, Frédéric Jousset – will designate the winners. A public prize of €10,000 will be awarded to one of the 18 shortlisted candidates, who will be chosen by public vote.
The Art Explora & Académie des Beaux-Arts European Prize is one of the many initiatives carried out by the Jousset Art Explora association, supported by an investment fund of 100 million euros.
The National Gallery in London was among the winners of the inaugural prize in 2020 which enabled its curators to take a Dutch Golden Age masterpiece, Jan van Huysum’s Flowers in a Terracotta Vase (1736-37), on tour in Britain. Last year’s winners include the Museo de Bellas Artes de Sevilla in Spain and the theater company Projekt Europa in the UK.
Jousset, the son of former Center Pompidou curator Marie-Laure Jousset, is the founder of WebHelp, a technical support and outsourcing company valued at 2.4 billion euros in 2019 according to Activity Report magazine (he left the company). The tech mogul also acquired the French art magazine fine arts in 2016.
