Art Prize of the SPD Parliamentary Group of Lower Saxony: the research before the jury

The work before

For the Art Prize of the SPD parliamentary group of Lower Saxony, each jury member could submit one proposal by June 22, two at most. Two names come to mind quickly. But I was not sitting there for myself, I was sitting there for the BBK Lower Saxony. So I did research, for weeks.

24 sources, eight questions

First the prize itself: 36 awards since 1988, nine of them to women. Then the search for positions connected to Lower Saxony, across 24 sources. Grants from the Ministry of Culture, the Sprengel Prize, Kunstverein Hannover, museums, the member directories of the BBK districts. Official bodies first, social media last. Eight test questions turned more than thirty positions into sixteen. The names stay within the jury.

Not alone

I sat on the jury standing in for Dagmar Schmidt, our chair. Between the individual phases we met in person in Hanover again and again, about the state of the research and about our own selection.

You owe that thoroughness to those you don’t propose, too.

In the end the prize went to a position I had not proposed. That was no failure of the research. I could take part in the discussion because I knew what the situation in Lower Saxony looks like. How it all went in detail is in the magazine.