For this Summer Session we’re thinking about celebrity, and one of the key ways in which celebrity status is produced in the art world is through the winning of prestigious awards. While these awards spotlight contemporary art, they often come at the cost of reducing the conversation around works to their marketability, and introduce the artists themselves to a number of ceaseless public media inquiries. Today we bring an excerpt from East of Borneo, in which author Carol Cheh examines the creation and reception of the Mohn Award. This article was originally published on August 9, 2012.

Meg Cranston, Made in L.A., 2012; installation view at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. Photo: Brian Forrest.

In March of this year, the Hammer Museum introduced the Mohn Award—a $100,000 art prize offered in conjunction with their new “Made in LA” biennial—to some fanfare. Blending elements of the Whitney Biennial’s Bucksbaum Award and Britain’s controversial Turner Prize, the Mohn Award will recognize a single biennial artist, selected from among sixty participants, with a hefty cash sum and the publication of a monographic book on the artist’s work. A jury of four professional curators chose five finalists shortly after the exhibition opened on June 2 and now, in a unique and attention-grabbing twist on the classic art prize format, the winner will be selected by public vote.

The Mohn Award is the latest in a series of flag-planting, publicity-generating spectacles that have altered the fabric of LA’s art landscape. If the Getty’s “Pacific Standard Time” initiative offered corrective histories, and Michael Govan’s upgrading of the LACMA campus with monumental, crowd-pleasing installations by Chris Burden and Michael Heizer provided iconic visual references, the Mohn Award could be said to add some serious bling to the mix. Money talks and, as many have noted, this award puts Los Angeles and the Hammer Museum on par with the biggest global players in the art prize market.

Read the full article here.