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Turner Prize heads to Coventry
Exhibition part of UK City of Culture 2021
The Turner Prize exhibition will be held at the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum as part of Coventry’s year as the UK City of Culture, it was announced today.
The City of Culture will begin in May 2021 with the full programme announced in January. The event will open with Coventry Moves, which will see a range of activities take place across the city.
City of Culture organisers have been working to respond to the challenges created by the ongoing Covid crisis.
“Over the summer we have been continuing to reimagine what a city of culture can be, given all the constraints that we are now working under,” said Martin Sutherland, the chief executive of Coventry City of Culture.
“We are determined that culture will make a significant social and economic impact on the city in the long-term and I am delighted that the team is developing a programme that speaks to our values and our vision and which, hopefully, gives people a great deal of confidence in visiting Coventry in 2021 and beyond.”
The exhibition of the Turner Prize’s shortlisted artists will be from 29 September 2021 to 12 January 2022, with the announcement of the winner on 1 December 2021. The annual £40,000 art prize is organised by Tate.
“Since 2007, the prize has been alternating between Tate Britain, which is its regular home, and every other year going to a city outside of London,” said Alex Farquharson, the director of Tate Britain and chair of the jury for the Turner Prize. “We are fantastically excited that it is being held in the Midlands for the first time in its history and in particular Coventry, which has so much of the UK’s population nearby.
“The Turner Prize brings audiences well beyond the art world into direct engagement with very new developments in contemporary art that might otherwise take quite a few years for that art to become more broadly known," Farquharson continued. "I think it is that encounter between really innovative art today and a really broad audience that is the magic offer that the Turner Prize presents, and nowhere more so than when it is shown outside of London.”