ArtPrize and the Reinvention of a Rust Belt City
Near Grand Rapids, Michigan
In the fall of two thousand nine, a twenty-seven-year-old entrepreneur named Rick DeVos opened Grand Rapids to the world. He announced that any artist could enter, any venue within three square miles of downtown could display work, and the public would vote on the winner of the largest art prize in the world: two hundred fifty thousand dollars. On opening day, more than twelve hundred artists from forty-plus states and a dozen countries displayed work across one hundred fifty venues. The crowds came.
ArtPrize was, in one sense, a bet. Grand Rapids in the first decade of the two thousands was a post-industrial Midwestern city working through the same questions every such city was asking: what do you become after the factories close? Rick DeVos, the grandson of Richard DeVos, co-founder of Amway, had grown up with capital and connections. He used them to create an event that required neither museums nor gatekeepers. The art appeared in bars, laundromats, auto body shops, hotels, parks, and corporate lobbies. The only requirement was that someone had to be willing to host it.
Within five years, ArtPrize was recognized as the most-attended public art event in the world, drawing upward of eight hundred thousand visitors to Grand Rapids each September and October. Over its run, the competition awarded more than seven and a half million dollars to artists.
The event was not without critics. Juried art professionals pointed out that public voting tends to favor large, technically impressive, representational work over conceptual or challenging pieces. The tension between popular taste and critical judgment was built into the format.
ArtPrize has continued in most years since, pausing only briefly for the pandemic in two thousand twenty. Its legacy is already durable: it transformed how Grand Rapids understood itself, from the city that used to make furniture into a city people come to for culture.
