The curator and director of Eindhoven’s Van Abbemuseum, Charles Esche, is one of two laureates for the European Cultural Foundation’s Routes Princess Margriet Award, it was announced Oct 13. Named in honor of Princess Margriet of the Netherlands, who was president of the ECF from 1983-2007, the award recognizes pioneers forging new “routes” in European arts and culture with a cash prize of 25000 euro each. Along with Esche, the London-based filmmaker and cultural activist John Akomfrah is co-laureate of the award’s fourth edition, to be presented in a ceremony in Brussels in March 2012.
The international jury chose Esche on the strength of his curatorial oeuvre as well as for his role in rethinking models of art institutions across stops at Tramway in Glasgow and Rooseum in Malmö in addition to Van Abbemuseum over the course of his career. According to the citation, “[Esche’s] impressive record of challenging programming (exhibitions, debates, symposia) has developed a conversation between art and society, a conversation which imagines how individual citizens can live and enact a future society together.”
The Ghanain-born Akomfrah was chosen for a body of work exploring issues related to culture, migration, integration and intercultural exchange, from his debut film in 1986, Handsworth Songs, to his latest, Nine Muses (2010). The citation notes, “In its entirety, Akomfrah’s longstanding body of work is a profound and multi-layered creation championing voices often hidden from the mainstream discourse of European pasts.”
The jury was chaired by Hilary Carty, former director of the UK’s Cultural Leadership Program, and included Sudeep Dasgupta, associate professor in the Department of Media & Culture at the University of Amsterdam; the Dutch artist Jan Dibbets; Maria Lind, curator and director of Tensta Konsthall, Sweden; and Els van der Plas, director premsela of the Dutch Platform for Design and Fashion.