Serpentine & FLAG: A Million-Pound Prize Crashes Into Emerging Art
A new transatlantic art prize launches as Serpentine in London and the FLAG Art Foundation in New York commit £1 million to emerging artists — a major boost in the 2025 contemporary art landscape.
Two institutions — Serpentine in London and the FLAG Art Foundation in New York — just rewired the landscape with a move that feels less like an announcement and more like a pressure wave. Over the next decade, five artists will receive £200,000 each, a total of £1 million pushed straight into practices still fighting for time, space and visibility.
It’s the Serpentine × FLAG Art Foundation Prize, and it hits at the moment when most artists are hanging on by their fingernails — under ten years into their professional life, building exhibitions city by city, hoping someone notices before the grind hollows them out.
Bettina Korek framed it as a widening of the field, saying the partnership aims to “forge new connections between artists and audiences.” FLAG’s founder Glenn Fuhrman pushed the urgency even further, calling it the institution’s “most significant commitment to artists beyond the United States.” Both statements underline the same truth: this prize isn’t ornamental. It’s structural.
Each chosen artist will mount a solo exhibition that debuts in London in 2027, then shifts to New York in 2028 — not copied, but reimagined. Two publics, two cities, one trajectory deliberately expanded. A rotating jury will make the calls, pulling nominees from every geography, every medium, every background where ambition outweighs airtime.
This prize doesn’t pretend to fix the art world’s imbalances. But it does something rarer: it removes one of the biggest choke points — money — right when it matters most. It buys artists time. It buys them risk. It buys them room to build work that isn’t bent around survival.
For a field used to trickle-down support, this feels like a rare surge upward. A decade-long commitment. A cross-ocean alliance. A bet on artists who haven’t been padded by legacy or market glow.
It lands like a signal flare: the next wave won’t wait for permission. It’s being financed into existence.
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