Henkel Central Eastern Europe (Henkel CEE) has been sponsoring the Henkel Art.Award. in cooperation with KulturKontakt Austria since 2002, as a means of promoting artists from the Central and Eastern European cultural region as well as Central Asia. In 2009, the Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien (Museum of Modern Art – MUMOK) is serving for the first time as a cooperation partner for the art prize. The international jury of experts, which consists of the jury chairman Edelbert Köb, Director of the Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Jerica Ziherl, manager of the museum of modern art in Rijeka, Brigitte Huck, art critic and curator, Zoran Petrovski, head of the film, photography and video department of the Museum of Contemporary Art “MOCA” in Skopje, and Barnabas Bencsik, Director of the Ludwig Museum in Budapest, recently convened in Vienna. The members of the jury selected the five nominees to win the Henkel Art.Award. 2009 from a total of 830 works of art submitted to win the art prize. "The nominated finalists, all of whom already boast international experience and success, come from five different Eastern European countries. They embody the diversity and dynamic nature of the artistic development in their regions".

The five young artists, who all have the chance to win a monetary prize of 7,000 euros, an exhibition in their homeland and an individual presentation at MUMOK, are Mladen Miljanovic (Bosnia-Herzegovina), Agnieszka Kurant (Poland), Ivan Grubanov (Serbia), Lucia Tkacova/ Anetta Mona Chisa (Slovakia), Aleksandra Vajd (Slovenia) in cooperation with Hynek Alt (Czech Republic).

Attractive promotional prize for promising Austrian artists 
Henkel CEE also bestows two promotional prizes, each of which is endowed to the sum of 2,000 euros, which are designed to support promising young artists. “In this way, we not only want to promote the numerous young talented artists working in the field of fine arts in Central and Eastern Europe, but also in Austria,” says Günter Thumser, President of Henkel CEE, expressing his pleasure at the large number of entries. The second prize for young artists from the CEE region will be awarded to Dalibor Trencevski, a young artist from Macedonia, and one of the people taking part in the Artists-in-Residence Program of KulturKontakt Austria.

Henkel Art.Award. event on November 25, 2009 in Vienna
The gala award ceremony for the Henkel Art.Award. and the presentation of all works submitted by the finalists will take place in the Hofstallungen (Imperial Stables) of MUMOK on November 25, 2009. The works of all the nominees, as well as the award winners of the promotional prizes and of course the winner of the Henkel Art.Award. 2009, will be exhibited from November 26-29, 2009 in the Hofstallungen of MUMOK. Admission is free. 

Further information is available at http://artaward.henkel.at