The curator, critic, and art historian Okwui Enwezor (b. 1963) has been awarded the 2017 International Folkwang Prize. Enwezor, Artistic Director of the Haus der Kunst in Munich, is one of the most prolific curators and theorists active in modern and contemporary art. Enwezor has served as director of numerous international major exhibitions, such as documenta 11 in Kassel (2002) and the Venice Biennale (2015).

Dr. Ulrich Blank, Chair of the Folkwang-Museumsverein, announced the association’s decision by saying: “His greatest achievement in contemporary art has been to raise a global awareness of art beyond the Euro-American canon. This makes him one of the world’s most influential disseminators of contemporary art in the last decades. And in this way he is wholly in keeping with the spirit of Karl Ernst Osthaus.”

The official award ceremony will take place on 9 October 2017.

Worth € 25.000, the International Folkwang Prize is awarded each year by the Folkwang- Museumsverein e.V. to individuals and institutions that have made a special contribution to the promotion and dissemination of art to the general public, in a manner worthy of the memory of Museum-Folkwang founder Karl Ernst Osthaus (1874–1921).

The award was launched in autumn 2010 and was first awarded to Neil MacGregor, then-director of the British Museum. In October 2013 it was awarded to the patron of the arts and business owner Reinhold Würth, and in 2015 the prize went to the curator Hans Ulrich Obrist.