Marina Abramović Recieves the 2025 Praemium Imperiale Prize

16 July 2025

Marina Abramović has received the 2025 Praemium Imperiale Award for sculpture. The artist is one of five international recipients of the award, which is presented by the Japan Art Association, under its honorary patron Prince Hitachi, the younger brother of the Emperor Emeritus of Japan.

Marina Abramović has exhibited around the world, winning the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale in both 1997 and 2005. Her solo show at London’s Royal Academy of Arts (2023) saw her become the first woman in the RA’s 250-year history to occupy the entire gallery space. In one of her defining pieces, The Artist is Present (2010), she famously sat in place for three months, eight hours a day, while a succession of visitors to the Museum of Modern Art, New York, came to sit opposite her. ” It was a complete surprise,” she said, “this enormous need of humans to have contact”.

The Praemium Imperiale Awards have been given annually since 1989 to cover fields of achievement not represented by the Nobel Prizes. The laureates are selected from a list submitted by international advisers to the Japan Art Association.

Find out more via The Art Newspaper.

Image: Marina Abramović, The Artist is Present, 2010, Performance; The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Courtesy of Marina Abramović Archives. © Marina Abramović. Photo: Marco Anelli.