Everyone is Invited to the Winners Celebration
It was going to be at Rosa Parks Circle, but due to the weather we moved the ArtPrize Winners Announcement & Celebration indoors, to the Steelcase Ballroom at DeVos Place, 303 Monroe Ave. NW. It is free and open to everyone.
Doors open at 6PM, tomorrow. There is no charge to attend. Starting at 7PM, enjoy performances by Bollywood Dance Troupe, blue13, Chicago’s Bucket Boys, New Century Shadow Dancers and – at 8:20 – hear the announcement of the winner of ArtPrize 2009. Celebrate afterward with blue13.
Food is available for purchase and a cash bar.
UPDATE: We initially reported $5 for a calzone and soda, but the price for the general public is $6.50. Volunteers, wear your red Ask Me shirt and pick up a meal ticket from Kathy, so you can eat free.
Sponsored by Meijer, Dick and Betsy DeVos Family Foundation, Rick and Melissa DeVos, Daniel and Pamella DeVos, Douglas and Maria DeVos, Richard and Helen DeVos, VanderWeide Family
Who are the winners?
The winner of the $250,000 art prize is the artist with the most votes. Cast your vote by 11:59PM tonight.
Hats off to Rick Devos and all those involved in making this a truly “GRAND” event. I can’t wait until next years showing.
Very cool!
I hope this entire event from start, to end (just for this year!), will be turned into a documentary film and aired on PBS for all the country to hear, see and learn about!!
I am so happy to watched (even vicariously!) from across the continent!
What day is the event?
According to the ArtPrize e-mail Thursday, October 8th is the date of the Winners Celebration. What is the correct date? Thanks!
Actually, PBS is doing their own 1-hour documentary on Artprize. It’ll be interesting to see how they put it together.
Thank you Rick DeVos for bringing such a fabulous event to Grand Rapids! You have brought appreciation of art to so many- especially children. Great job!
Will artwork still be up on Saturday, October 10th? We have a group going and info is unclear.
What a truly wonderful idea–not just drawing attention to Grand Rapids but doing it in a very artistic way. Looking forward to the next one.
This has been a wonderful opportunity for artists to showcase their work to the public, screened only by businesses that hosted their work. It’s a great concept – public decides what is art and what is not.
Kudos to Rick DeVos for the idea and the desire to carry out something like this ‘art fair.’ It certainly brought people into town, and the residents of the surrounding area who revisited downtown after years of absence were pleasantly surprized at the improvements downtown. Everyone was excited about the art and the direction Grand Rapids seems to be going. All ages were involved, too. There was even an endorsement on NBC one morning, calling Grand Rapids an “innovative” destination.
Thanks should also go out to the community’s businesses, who hosted the artists’ work. Many stayed open after hours when they normally would be closed.
ArtPrize was a fabulous experience, and I hope it becomes an annual event. It made Grand Rapids SHINE.
Venues and artists agreed in their contracts to remain open with the work on exhibit until 10PM Saturday, Oct 10.
Hey Paul, I had put my piece back up after the wind tore it down last week, but last night the entire plywood wall came down in the wind, tearing the banner into several more pieces, and I wasn’t able to salvage the plywood. I should be finished dismantling and cleaning up everything tomorrow. Does this disqualify me from competing in Artprize next year since the piece isn’t up through October 10th? I still have my van, and I plan to leave Grand Rapids on October 11th. A few commentators on this blog have mentioned that artists should be disqualified next year if they took down their work early this year. Can you clarify?
Thank you to Rick DeVos and all who appreciated and participated. As an art educator and artist, this was such an uplifting and joyful event to be a part of. I am looking forward to the PBS documentary and hope that ArtPrize can be a future “happening” as well!
Why would taking your work down early disqualify you for next year? That makes no sense, especially if you’re not a top 10 artist. I’m taking mine down Friday afternoon because that’s the only free time I have.
The official rules state: Each Work must be exhibited for the entire length of ArtPrize, from September 23, 2009 to October 10, 2009.
Here are the rules:
http://blog.artprize.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/090914-Official-Rules-for-Artists1.pdf
I loved every minute of it and can hardly wait for next year!
Jason, the rules don’t state that artists will be disqualified next year, though.
Thanks once again Devos family and foundation!
So many artists, so little time!
We feel fortunate to have cast votes for the 400 plus works we were able to see first hand.
Apologies to the artists and their works that we were not able to to see firsthand.
We only voted for those actually viewed.
Outstanding!
My husband, friends and church group have had an excellent time of finding and viewing many of the art prize works. What a great way for a suburb dweller to see and learn about GR. We have enjoyed 3 different trips to the B.O.B. for pizza! I think 900 or so was my total. Please do it again next year! Congrats. Mary
Congratulations Ran Ortner!
I can’t believe that the moose didn’t get first place; it was the most intricate and took alot of time, but so did some others. Overall, there were alot of visitors. Hopefully next year things will be a little better organized downtown and not scatter all over the city from the west side to lenoard to wealthy and downtown. Plus maps weren’t even available at first until after numerous people complained. And the books were priced way to way at $15. As for the vendor issue Grand Rapids is not and has not been vendor freindly in years and charges over $300 a year for transient vendor to sell pop snacks, and/or hotdogs. Hopefully next year if it really is done some things will changed around including venues like for painting, digital, and sculptures, but we shall see. Hopefully art prize and devos’ and vanandels’ and mariott/alticor really will donate some of the money recovered from art prize (shuttles, book, souveniours) back into the community to some of the charities and non-profits.
What Aaron said…on both counts
. I was completely and pleasantly shocked when I found out a painting won. I kind of considered Ran an underdog due to the lack of top 100 representation of paintings. I also thought it was a fantastic idea to give something to Young Kim. I think this gives more people hope for next year, and that’s a good thing.
Is there any way for an individual artist to find out his or her own vote tally? It would be interesting to know.
Molly,
AP will not divulge vote tallies for any artist.
paul,
why won’t ap divulge vote tallies?
because they’re a secret.
I don’t need to know the vote tally. I do know that a lot of people had fun interacting with my piece, and that’s good enough for me. What would knowing I was 101st or 1001st tell me that I don’t already know? I had a great time, people responded to my work, and I’ll see if I can get in next year. It’s but one two week event out of a whole year of our lives as artists. That’s not enough to obsess over.
I don’t absolutely have to know how I placed, but Artprize should at least announce the numbers for the top ten. It’s about credibility. Could you imagine if presidential election committees didn’t reveal results? I think it’s crucial that the numbers are published. How else will you prove to artists around the world that Artprize is legitimate and worth entering in future years? I’m not seeing exactly the reasoning for withholding this information? Seems it would be more to Artprize’s benefit to let the world know. Is it because Artprize knows that this year’s first round voting system was seriously flawed? At least show the results for the top ten!
I think it’s time to put down the bone, Aaron. You’ve been chewing on it for months now. Everything in life is “seriously flawed,” including several presidential elections I can name, even with their numbers published. And AP is hardly a presidential election. If the AP prize amounts had two less zeroes, it wouldn’t have been noticed even as far away as Detroit. The large monetary prize doesn’t make it the Whitney Biennial (also “seriously flawed,” I would argue); it only makes it well-known. Whether it ever ranks with the Whitney I would not venture to predict.
For now, AP is what it is, a public art contest with a huge prize amount. Enjoy the ride while you’re on it, and, when it ends, move on.
Thank you for so politely kicking me to the curb, John. I’m just trying to help Artprize improve. Apparently not everyone shares my enthusiasm for the possibilities of Artprize.
I really didn’t mean to offend, Aaron. Apologies. But, sheeze, you made your point already … over and over and …
There have definitely been people on here much more redundant than Aaron.
Also, what’s the reasoning behind not showing votes? I don’t think I’ve seen an answer for that yet. If there has been, feel free to enlighten me.
This is a transparency challenge that AP should overcome. I am certain the voting et al is absent of any malfesance so there is no suggestion of any thing wrong. I personally know what type of traffic my venue received and would like the numbers simply to see the response percentage (i actually took a poll and would like to compare results). Admittedly i would like to then compare my percentage with a sample of artists from the venues that essentially made their traffic data public. But even if i was just provided with my numbers up and down it would be immensely useful. I am not complaining at all, just simple after action and benchmarking for next year. I am sure AP is doing the same thing with all the numbers they have. Sorry for the poor spelling
With lack of a reason stated for not revealing vote information, one cannot help but speculate why (rushing to fill the vacuum of info, if you will). Two feasible reasons come to mind. The third is unspeakable and I won’t sling that mud. Reason One: After the first week of voting, all vote tallies were cleared from the voting system except for the Top 25. The rest are *technically* irrelevant for determining the top ten and the winner, and probably take up a lot of storage space, not to mention a whole separate voting mechanism would have to be built for the top 10 to preserve the first week vote tallies intact. Simply put, they can’t reveal information they don’t have. Reason Two: The cost of AP staff and IT labor to pull, compile, and communicate the individual vote tally information for each artist (remember, there are over 1200 of them) is simply too high. Those are my best guesses.