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11—14.12.25 Antwerp Expo
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The Art Antwerp Acquisition Prize – which replaces the former Best Booth Prize – will support the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (KMSKA) through the donation of a work of art valued at up to €10,000 to its collection.
This initiative not only fulfils an artist’s dream of having their work included in a major museum collection, but also supports the gallery in achieving a meaningful sale, while enriching the holdings of one of Antwerp’s most important cultural institutions.
The 2025 jury for the Art Antwerp Acquisition Prize consists of Joost Vanhaerents (private collector, Vanhaerents Art Collection), Christian Mosar (Artistic Director, Konschthal Esch), Lisa van Gerven (Curator, KMSKA), and Annelien De Troij (Curator, KMSKA).
The prize is made possible thanks to the support of Delen Private Bank.
Discover the 2025 jury members:
Annelien De Troij (b. 1991) is an art historian and curator. She obtained her Master’s degree in Art Sciences from KU Leuven in 2013, with a specialization in Art Criticism. From 2013 to 2019, she was part of the art-historical team at Axel Vervoordt Gallery, where she coordinated exhibitions of artists including Günther Uecker, Kazuo Shiraga, Richard Serra, El Anatsui, Ann Veronica Janssens, and Kimsooja.
From 2019 to 2024, De Troij worked as a researcher at the Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp (M HKA), where she led the research project on Jef Verheyen. This resulted in the 2024 retrospective Jef Verheyen. Window on Infinity at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (KMSKA).
Since 2024, De Troij has been a curator at the KMSKA. Most recently, she curated Hans Op de Beeck’s solo exhibition at the museum and is currently preparing exhibitions on Philip Aguirre and Luc Tuymans.
Christian Mosar is the founding director of the Department of Cultural Institutions of the City of Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg. This department oversees two institutions: the contemporary art center Konschthal and the artist residencies Bridderhaus. Both were created as part of the cultural program of Esch 2022, European Capital of Culture, and have since been made permanent.
Konschthal’s exhibition program has already presented monographic exhibitions of artists such as Gregor Schneider, Deimantas Narkevicius, and Jeppe Hein, among others.
From 16 October 2025 to 22 February 2026, Konschthal will host a major exhibition of David Claerbout.
Christian Mosar is also the editor of a series of monographic publications produced in the context of exhibitions and residencies at Bridderhaus and Konschthal.
Joost Vanhaerents (born in 1969 in Torhout) ran the family business in the construction and real estate sector for twenty years, working as an industrial engineer in construction. Parallel to his business career, his passion for art, which he had inherited from his childhood, grew.
Together with his father Walter and sister Els, he is the driving force behind the Vanhaerents Art Collection, a leading private collection of contemporary art (1965–present), housed in a 3,500 m² building in the Dansaert district of Brussels. The collection has been open to the public since 2007 and is presented in the form of an innovative viewing depot, a hybrid between exhibition and storage.
In addition to its permanent operations in Brussels, the Vanhaerents Art Collection has organised several international exhibitions, including at the Venice Biennale (Heartbreak Hotel, 2015; The Death of James Lee Byars & Zad Moultaka in Dialogue, 2019; Boundaries by Memo Akten, 2024), and in Lille (Au bout de mes rêves, Tripostal, 2023). Together, these projects attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors and confirm the international appeal of the collection.
The Vanhaerents Art Collection can be visited on request and by reservation on selected Saturdays. More information is available at www.vanhaerentsartcollection.com.
Lisa van Gerven is a curator at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (KMSKA). She studied Art Sciences at Ghent University, specializing in contemporary art, and subsequently completed the postgraduate program in Exhibition and Management of Contemporary Art.
After working for several years in the collection department of the Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp (M HKA) (2013–2017), she joined the exhibition team at KMSKA in 2017. Her curatorial practice is rooted in a strong art-historical foundation, serving as a basis for dialogue with contemporary art.
Most recently, she curated exhibitions such as Visionair Verzameld (2025), which integrated contemporary art with the museum’s collection of Old Masters, Panamarenko. Infinite Imagination (2025), and Magritte. La ligne de vie (2025).
In 2024, the Best Booth Prize at Art Antwerp rewarded the gallery presenting the most cohesive and compelling artistic vision.
Key evaluation criteria include the artistic quality of the booth, as well as its diversity, inclusivity, and relevance. A professional jury selected the winning gallery, which received a €3,000 prize, awarded during the opening day of the fair on Thursday 12 December 2024.
The winner of the best Booth Prize 2024 is Harlesden High Street and Season 4 Episode 6 with Alex Farrar and Benjamin Francis.
The statement of the jury:
«The jury was impressed by the many booths that successfully created their own worlds through personal and intimate propositions, as well as daring statements. After careful and anonymous deliberation, the jury has chosen the winning booth: a shared presentation by Harlesden High Street (London, New York) and Season 4 Episode 6 (London). This collaborative effort features a duo presentation of works by Alex Farrar and Benjamin Francis.
The jury was particularly impressed by how this collaboration exemplifies that a joint effort can result in a cohesive and thoughtfully curated presentation within the context of an art fair. The presentation stands out for its well-balanced exhibition concept, a site-specific environment where the artists integrate art seamlessly into both body and space».
Discover the jury members of the Best Booth Prize 2024:
Elisa De Wyngaert is an art and fashion historian. Since 2015, she has been a curator at MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp where she has curated different exhibitions and publications merging fashion and contemporary art, including ‘SOFT? Tactile Dialogues’, ‘E/MOTION – Fashion in Transition’, ‘MIRROR MIRROR – Fashion & the Psyche’, ‘ECHO. Wrapped in Memory’, ‘Masquerade, Make-up & Ensor’.
Maurice Funken started working at NAK Neuer Aachener Kunstverein in 2015. At the beginning of 2018 he was appointed artistic director of the Kunstverein. NAK not only assumes a core function for the local art scene, but is also recognized internationally as an innovative platform for contemporary art and its discourses. As director and curator for over 30 exhibitions at NAK, he has worked with artists such as Xavier Mary, Julia Scher, Egan Frantz, Nora Turato, Markus Saile, Thomas Dozol, Frankfurter Hauptschule, Kate Davis, Stefan Marx, Soufiane Ababri, Evan Ifekoya, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Monty Richthofen, Joëlle Dubois, Jody Korbach and Marion Baruch. Simultaneously, he has expanded the Kunstverein’s programme to include multidisciplinary pop-cultural positions such as Fischerspoooner and Lars Eidinger in the past few years, stretching the idea of presumed boundaries of contemporary art and what the Kunstverein as an institution can be.
Besides his position in Aachen, he’s been a lecturer at RWTH Aachen University and frequently curates exhibitions on a freelance basis for other art spaces. Funken studied art history at RWTH Aachen University and the University of York.
Joseph Kouli, a collector based in Paris, understood one day that contemporary art was not a field reserved for those with the three forms of capital (economic, cultural, and social), but rather a realm of objects and practices that, because they were contemporary to him, were both economically and culturally accessible. Started by accident in 2006, and connected to artists of his generation who depict the “époque” in which he lives, the collection is now rich with nearly 200 works. It has been loaned regularly (to events like the Venice Biennale, Hammer Museum, FRACs, etc.) and has been the subject of dedicated exhibitions in art centers.
Portrait photo by Nicolas Giraud
Charlotte Martens is curator, producer and consultant for exhibitions and art commissions. She works for museums, presentation institutions and artists. Martens is a graduated art historian (University of Leiden, North Carolina State University Raleigh, USA). She also studied restoration at Delft University of Technology and art and culture management at Erasmus University Rotterdam.
For more than a decade she was an exhibition maker and project manager at Atelier van Lieshout (AVL). She has worked with and for artists on major international exhibitions, both in the public indoor and outdoor space. She has built an extensive international network. Giving a presentation from A-Z is Martens’ strength. She has set up exhibitions in various art disciplines and in public space. Since 2022 she works as a senior curator at the Kunsthal Rotterdam that is built in 1992 by Rem Koolhaas.
Portrait photo by Lenny Oosterwijk