The GAC gallery owners' awards honor Chiquita Room and the collector Lluís Coromina

BarcelonaCatalan gallery owners held their annual awards ceremony at the MACBA this Tuesday. The seventeenth Night of Gallery Art recognized the diversity of art galleries and collecting. Honorary awards went to artist Eugenia Balcells and gallery owner Miquel Alzueta. Baroness Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza also received a newly created distinction, the Prize for the Promotion of the Visual Arts, following the museum she plans to open in the former Comedia cinema in Barcelona.

The Collecting Award went to Lluís Coromina Isern, for the Eat Art and El Puntal spaces in Banyoles, which he promotes through his foundation, as well as for his multidisciplinary exhibition center in Barcelona. In the art criticism category, the winner is critic and curator Pilar Parcerisas, for "her critical perspective on contemporary art and thought, for her research and study of art across different fields of inquiry, and for promoting special cultural projects of international standing." And in the media category, the winner is art historian Judith Méndez Moreno, for her outreach project on Instagram. Neither Mona nor Lisa, which is considered "a cultural initiative with a gender perspective that provides critical tools for the historical and contemporary view of art through cultural programs and free content on social media."

As for the curatorial award, the winner is Montse Frisach, for the exhibition program.Unexpected visits, The latest edition was held at the Girona Art Museum, the Montserrat Museum, and the Morera Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Lleida. According to the jury, this program promotes "the exhibition of works from gallery collections that are presented in dialogue with pieces from the permanent collections of various museums in Catalonia." Among the historical exhibitions, the winning gallery is Art Petritxol, forOlga Sacharoff. Avant-garde, ingenuity, and tradition, for "the vindication of an avant-garde artist who has not been sufficiently recognized in our country." And in terms of annual programming, the winner is Chiquita Room, founded in 2018, "for its multidisciplinary and collective work and for supporting local and international talent, through in-depth listening." In the art gallery award category for the best exhibition of an established artist, the winner is the Marc Domènech gallery, forJoaquín Chancho. 1970s, curated by Fede Montornés, for "the investigation of a relatively unknown but crucial period of the artist's life when he developed the genesis of his commitment to painting devoid of any naturalistic reference."

This year's first prize was awarded ex aequo in the history of the GAC. In the art gallery category for the best exhibition of a mid-career artist, the Artur Ramon Art gallery won for the installationAnother imagination, by Jordi Ortiz, because it is "an invitation to rediscover the urban nature of Barcelona through photographs of 373 tree barks that show their intrinsic creativity and interaction with the environment", and the House of Chappaz gallery, for the exhibitionVillage boy, by Carles Congost, for "the exploration of issues of personal identity and social pressure in a rural setting." Finally, the Bombon Projects gallery won in the category of best exhibition by an emerging artist for Firefly, by Lara Fluxà, "a proposal for a new production of aerial sculptures and installations made with glass, as a metaphor for the fragility of bodies, and with other fragile, liquid, translucent, transparent or waste materials to rethink the weakness of ecosystems."