OTTAWA, Feb. 3, 2017 /CNW/ - The Sobey Art Foundation and the National Gallery of Canada (NGC) today launched a call for nominations today for the 2017 Sobey Art Award, Canada's prestigious contemporary art prize created in 2002 by the Sobey Art Foundation. It is an annual prize given to a Canadian artist age 40 or under who has exhibited in a public or commercial art gallery within 18 months of being nominated. Agents and institutions have until March 3, 2017, to submit artist nominations. A $50,000 prize will be awarded to the winner, along with $10,000 prizes for the short listed artists and $500 prize to each of the remaining long listed artists

The Award's 2017 long list of nominees will be announced in April and the short list will be released in June. An exhibition of works by the five short-listed artists will be presented at the Art Museum at the University of Toronto from October 24, 2017 to December 9, 2017. The winner of the 2017 Sobey Art Award will be announced at a gala at the Art Museum at the University Toronto on October 25, 2017.

The 2017 curatorial jury panel, chaired by National Gallery of Canada's Senior Curator of Contemporary Art, Josée Drouin-Brisebois, is composed of a representative from a noted gallery in each of Canada's five regions:  the Atlantic Provinces, Quebec, Ontario, the Prairies and the North, and the West Coast and Yukon, and one international juror.

For more information and nomination guidelines please visit gallery.ca/sobey, or contact: Sobey Art, Award c/o National Gallery of Canada, 380 Sussex Drive P.O. Box 427, Station A Ottawa, ON, K1N 9N4

About the Sobey Art Award process
The National Gallery of Canada will accept nominations for the 2017 Sobey Art Award from recognized agents and institutions. The curatorial jury panel will oversee the award selection process. From the complete list of nominated artists, the jurors will create a long list of five artists from each region. Their choices will be based on professional knowledge of their regions and of the national and international art scenes. The panel will then choose one representative from each region to be included on the national short list and in the 2017 Sobey Art award exhibition. The panel will also select the final award winner.

About the Sobey Art Award
Since its launch, the Sobey Art Award has profiled 300 Canadian artists through its long-list process. For recipients, the Sobey Art Award has become a mark of distinction that has steered the artists toward national and international recognition. Past award recipients include Brian Jungen, Jean-Pierre Gauthier, Annie Pootoogook, Michel de Broin, Tim Lee, David Altmejd, Daniel Barrow, Daniel Young & Christian Giroux, Raphaëlle de Groot, Duane Linklater, Nadia Myre, and Abbas Akhavan. The 2016 Sobey Art Award winner, Jeremy Shaw, was announced on November 1.

About the Sobey Art Foundation
The Sobey Art Foundation was established in 1981 with a mandate to carry on the work of entrepreneur and business leader, the late Frank H. Sobey, to collect and preserve representative examples of 19th- and 20th-centuries Canadian art. In one of the finest private collections of its kind, the Sobey Art Foundation has assembled outstanding examples from Canadian Masters such as Cornelius Krieghoff, Tom Thomson and J.E.H. MacDonald. The collection is on view in the former home of Frank Sobey and his wife Irene in Pictou County, Nova Scotia.

About the National Gallery of Canada
The National Gallery of Canada is home to the most important collections of historical and contemporary Canadian art. The Gallery also maintains Canada's premier collection of European Art from the 14th to the 21st centuries, as well as important works of American, Asian and Indigenous Art and renowned international collections of prints, drawings and photographs. In 2015, the National Gallery of Canada established the Canadian Photography Institute, a global multidisciplinary research center dedicated to the history, evolution and future of photography. For more information, visit gallery.ca and follow us on Twitter @gallerydotca

SOURCE National Gallery of Canada