From 9 February through 9 June, Erarta Museum of Contemporary Art was hosting an exhibition of artworks nominated for the 2024 Erarta Prize – the only art prize judged by the viewers. In 2024, the total prize value for the artists was increased to 3.5 million rubles. At the suggestion of our most engaged viewers who took part in various challenges and other prize-related activities the previous year, the 2024 prize value was fully allocated towards supporting the artists and distributed among the nominees according to the voting results.

The 2024 Erarta Prize exhibition was organised with the special aim of determining the winners through a public vote. The large-scale show at Erarta’s Grand Hall featured the artworks by 40 contemporary artists – paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures, photographs, installations, as well as other contemporary art media. Over the span of four months, exhibition visitors voted for their favourite exhibits.

 

 

The Erarta Prize project was launched in 2023: taking into account the takeaways of the first exhibition and viewers’ feedback, Erarta decided to introduce several changes to the 2024 Prize awarding procedure. For instance, all holders of valid Erarta Museum Tickets and Memberships who were not able to travel to St. Petersburg during the period of the 2024 Erarta Prize exhibition had the option to vote in absentia.

Another new feature of 2024 was the introduction of a guaranteed reward for all nominees that depended on their exact ranking. Consequently, the prize was distributed through a series of three voting rounds. Every vote was extremely important: by supporting the artwork of their choice, the viewers offered its creator a chance to compete in the next round and ultimately win a bigger prize. The first two rounds, which lasted from 9 February through 17 March and from 18 March through 25 April respectively, followed similar rules: 15 artworks which had the least votes at the end of each were ranked from 40th to 11th. The creators of the top 10 artworks which qualified for the third round continued to compete for the Grand Prix. The final voting round came to a close on 5 June. The majority of viewer votes went to Oleg Ivaschenko’s Drop, for which the Grand Prix of 500,000 rubles was awarded.

Follow this link to view the winners’ artworks and voting results.

Erarta would like to thank everyone who took an active part in determining the prize winners!