Beck's Futures

Beck's Futures was a British art prize founded by London's Institute of Contemporary Arts and sponsored by Beck's beer given to contemporary artists.

Prior to the establishment of the prize in 2000, Beck's had sponsored several exhibitions of contemporary art in Britain by providing free beer. Together with Artangel, they had also commissioned a number of works by artists, including Rachel Whiteread's House and Water Tower and pieces by Douglas Gordon and Tony Oursler.

Although it does not receive as much publicity as the Turner Prize, the prize fund is larger - in 2003, it was £65,000 to the Turner Prize's £20,000. Of this, £20,000 went to the winner, who also took a share of the £40,000 divided between all the shortlisted artists. The remaining £5,000 was allocated to the Student Prize for Film and Video, with £2,000 of that going to the winner.

For the first three years of the prize a call for nominations was made to curators and critics around the UK. This proved controversial as unlike the Turner Prize artists knew they had been nominated even if they did not make the final shortlist. The open call was replaced with an anonymous nominations panel.

The 2003 prize, presented by Wim Wenders, was awarded on April 29 at the Institute of Contemporary Arts. As well as Nashashibi, the shortlisted artists were Bernd Behr, Nick Crowe, Alan Currall, Inventory, David Sherry, Lucy Skaer, Francis Upritchard and Carey Young. The panel of judges was chaired by the artist Michael Landy, and also included the curators Russell Ferguson, Maria Lind and Hans Ulrich Obrist.

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