Art Basel 2025 debuts global Awards as 289 galleries arrive in Basel; Latinx luminaries Cecilia Vicuña and Delcy Morelos headline the spotlight.
Move over, routine art‑fair fatigue: Art Basel 2025 rolls into the Messeplatz with not only 289 galleries from 40‑plus countries but a fresh constellation of honors—the inaugural Art Basel Awards.
Among the 36 medalists chosen by an international jury, two Latinx powerhouses—Cecilia Vicuña (Icon Artist) and Delcy Morelos (Established Artist)—score historic first‑year medals, injecting palpable excitement into the weeklong art marathon.
Ecosystem love, not just market buzz – Categories span Icon, Established, Emerging, Cross‑Disciplinary, Curator, Institution, Patron, Ally, and Storyteller, signaling a holistic approach.
Peer‑elected Gold Medals – Medalists will vote later this year for 12 Gold winners, distributing nearly $300k in flexible support, half of it reserved for artists.
Summit tie‑in – On 19 June, Art Basel hosts its first Awards Summit, gathering business‑of‑art heavyweights and creative disruptors. Expect Vicuña’s eco‑poetics and Morelos’s earthy architectures to frame the conversation.
Cecilia Vicuña – Fresh from her Turbine Hall commission at Tate Modern, the Chilean poet‑activist brings her quipus (knot sculptures) to Basel Unlimited, braiding Andean cosmologies with climate urgency.
Delcy Morelos – After flooring Venice 2024 with a scent‑laden clay labyrinth, the Colombian artist premieres a 25‑meter adobe tunnel in Halle 1, inviting collectors to literally inhale the South American soil. Both awards prove Basel’s promise isn’t just about blue‑chip canvases—it’s about amplifying voices that tether art to land, ancestry, and activism.
Here’s your crash map:
Galleries – Heavy hitters Hauser & Wirth, Kurimanzutto, and Mendes Wood DM share aisles with first‑timers from Lagos and Seoul.
Feature – Focus booths spotlight overlooked histories, like a rediscovered cohort of 1970s Caribbean abstraction.
Statements – Forty young spaces flex four‑figure price points—perfect hunting ground for the next Morelos.
Unlimited – Thirty large‑scale installations, including an AI‑powered mural by Argentinian duo Mika Rottenberg & Diego Golombek.
VIP Parcours Night turns Basel’s old town into an open‑air sculpture park.
The revamped Kunsthaus Basel unveils its geothermal‑cooled wing with a Tránsito Amaguaña retrospective.
Rhine Swim returns: float downstream with collectors, then debate resale rights over bratwurst.
2026 — Living Systems Lab Residency Launch: Eco‑biologists team up with artists inside a converted factory on the Rhine.
2027 — Carbon‑Neutral Fairgrounds Complete: Solar canopies and river‑powered cooling slash Art Basel’s footprint by 70 percent.
2028 — Collector DAO Goes Live: Token‑based voting lets patrons co‑commission public art from past Award medalists.
With the Art Basel Awards debut, a Latinx spotlight, and 289 galleries ready to test both wallets and worldviews, Art Basel 2025 isn’t just another art fair—it’s an ecosystem reboot.
From Vicuña’s celestial quipus to Morelos’s earthen rituals, the week promises to bend the art market toward voices that matter. Basel’s message? The future is plural, planetary, and proudly Latinx—see you in the Rhine glow.
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