Reorganization of Evaluation Criteria and Award Structure
At the 21st Monthly Art Awards ceremony held at the Sungkok Art Museum on December 1, 2025, Monthly Art (Representative: Lee Ki-young) honored Kim Beom in the Artist category, Lev AAN in the Criticism category, and ten outstanding exhibitions including the Best Exhibition award for Art Sonje Center’s 《Adrián Villar Rojas: The Language of the Enemy》 (2025). In addition, in collaboration with “Culture and Arts for You”, a new category titled “Audience’s Choice: Notable Exhibition” was introduced, recognizing the Top 5 exhibitions including the ‘ACC Future Prize: Kim Ayoung 《Delivery Dancer's Arc: Inverse》’ (2024) presented by the National Asian Culture Center.
Ahead of the 50th anniversary of Monthly Art next year, the awards ceremony introduced several changes, including a reorganization of the evaluation criteria and the timing of the awards. Another key change was the adoption of a dual structure combining expert jury evaluation with audience participation.
For the 21st Monthly Art Awards, the evaluation criteria for each category were clarified and refined. In the Artist category, emphasis was placed on mid-career or senior artists who have already accumulated a significant body of achievements and whose accomplishments are not merely the result of temporary attention but indicate sustained potential for future development. Similarly, the Criticism category focused on the continuity of writing and activities that actively engage and operate within contemporary art discourse.
Another important evaluation factor was the sustained trajectory of critics who have developed a consistent thematic awareness and critical language over time both within and beyond the pages of Monthly Art. For the Exhibition category, efforts were made from the nomination stage to encompass a wide range of venues, including national and public museums, private institutions, small-scale spaces, and regional exhibitions. As a result, rather than the scale of an exhibition or the number of visitors, the key criteria became the relevance of the issues addressed and the curatorial strength with which those issues were convincingly articulated.
Another notable change in this edition was the adjustment of the awards timeline and eligibility period. Previously, the awards ceremony had been held in August and considered exhibitions from April of the previous year to June of the current year, making it difficult to fully reflect the developments of a given year. To address this limitation, beginning with the 21st edition the ceremony was moved to the end of the year, and the eligibility period was expanded to include exhibitions held through September. This adjustment aims to more accurately recognize the artists, critics, and exhibitions that demonstrated the most significant impact and influence throughout the year.
The evaluation process for the 21st Monthly Art Awards consisted of two stages: nomination and final deliberation. The nomination committee included Sangho Choi, curator at the Busan Museum of Contemporary Art and recipient of the Best Exhibition award in the 2024 edition, along with Wonseok Koh, Sunwoo Nam, Moonjung Lee, Jeong Heon Ki, and Seewon Hyun. The final jury consisted of Ki Hey-Kyung, Ahn Soyeon, Shim Sang-yong, Shim Jieon, and Byun Jong-pil.
The winners of the Artist and Criticism categories each received a prize of 10 million KRW, while the Best Exhibition award carried a prize of 5 million KRW.
