Northern Trust Purchase Prize

Each year EXPO CHICAGO and Presenting Sponsor Northern Trust select artworks from the fair’s EXPOSURE section– featuring galleries ten years and younger– to be purchased for an institution’s permanent collection. Since 2013, the award was gifted to one institution, but in 2022 it expanded to three U.S. institutions located in East, West and Midwest regions. Previous institution recipients include The Art Institute of Chicago; The Arts Club of Chicago; Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University; DePaul Art Museum, DePaul University; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg; Pérez Art Museum; Portland Art Museum; Saint Louis Art Museum; Seattle Art Museum; Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago; Speed Art Museum; Walker Art Center. Learn more about the Northern Trust Purchase Prize artists and gallery recipients below.

2023 Northern Trust Purchase Prize

The 2023 Northern Trust Purchase Prize has been awarded to three national institutions: Seattle Art Museum; the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg; and Saint Louis Art Museum.

“The Northern Trust Purchase Prize shares with the EXPOSURE section a spirit of inclusion and mission to enhance visibility of underrecognized artists and arts regions. The artists in the EXPOSURE section, presented by up-and-coming galleries ten years and younger, have the opportunity to be included in important institutional collections from around the country, and, in turn, the institutions gain by adding to their holdings the work of exciting creators that perhaps were under their radar.”
— Aimé Iglesias Lukin | 2023 EXPOSURE curator & Director and Chief Curator of Visual Arts at Americas Society in New York

In previous years, the Northern Trust Purchase Prize was awarded to:

2022: Reginald Sylvster II’s Four Corners, displayed at Maximillian William Gallery, donated to Pérez Art Museum Miami and chosen by María Elena Ortiz, Curator at the Pérez Art Museum Miami; Nohemí Pérez’s El Palmar No. 4; and Pintura No. 3, and Pintura No. 1 from the series El Palmar, displayed at Instituto de Visión, donated to Portland Art Museum and chosen by Curator of Modern & Contemporary Art, Portland Art Museum; Adler Guerrier’s Untitled (Forms–dodecagon, evening primrose, flânerie–brought to bear on a Texan landscape–San Antonio) YGB, Untitled (Forms–dodecagon, evening primrose, flânerie–brought to bear on a Texan landscape–San Antonio) GBY, and Untitled (Wander and Errancies–memories within; citrus in Saint Augustine), displayed at Marisa Newman Projects, donated to Walker Art Center and chosen by Henrietta Huldisch, the Chief Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Walker Art Center;

2019: Summer Wheat’s Extinguishers, displayed at Shulamit Nazarian Gallery, and Kameelah Janan Rasheed's Lazy Equation, Long Division, II, Connect the Dots, and Perimeter, displayed at NOME, Berlin, donated to Speed Art Museum and chosen by Miranda Lash, Curator of Contemporary Art of the Speed Art Museum;

2018: Amir H. Fallah’s Calling On The Past, displayed at Shulamit Nazarian Gallery, donated to The University of Chicago’s Smart Museum of Art and chosen by Alison Gass, the Dana Feitler Director of the Smart Museum of Art;

2017: Rachel Monosov and Admire Kamudzengerere’s collaborative project 1972, exhibited by Catinca Tabacaru Gallery, donated to Northwestern University’s Mary & Leigh Block Museum of Art and chosen by Lisa Graziose Corrin, the Ellen Philips Katz Director of the Block Museum of Art, Christine O. Robb, Chair of the Block Museum Board of Advisors and Kathleen Bickford Berzock, Block Museum Associate Director of Curatorial Affairs;

2016: Neil Raitt’s Emerald Waters (New Beverly), displayed at Anat Ebgi Gallery, donated to DePaul Art Museum and chosen by DePaul Art Museum Executive Director Julie Rodrigues Widholm and DePaul University Trustee Dia Weil;

2015: JJ PEET’s Jaw X, displayed at On Stellar Rays Gallery, donated to The Arts Club of Chicago and chosen by Arts Club Executive Director Janine Mileaf and Chairman of the Board Helyn Goldenberg;

2014: Elise Ferguson’s Saree, displayed at Romer Young Gallery, chosen by a jury led by Michael Darling, James W. Alsdorf Chief Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and placed in the permanent collection at Northern Trust;

2013: Jorinde Voigt’s Horizon (Berlin II), displayed at David Nolan Gallery and Corbett vs. Dempsey Gallery, donated to The Art Institute of Chicago and selected by Mark Pascale, Janet and Craig Duchossois Curator of Prints and Drawings.