What Happened in 2020 in ERSTE Foundation’s Network?
Jakob Lena Knebl and Ashley Hans Scheirl. Photo: HBF/Trippolt
JANUARY
FEBRUARY
Maribel Königer and Dragana Crvenica receive PRO PR Globe Award 2020 The winners of the PRO PR Globe Awards 2020, which extend beyond South-Eastern Europe, were announced on 13 January. Maribel Königer, head of Communications, Journalism and Media at ERSTE Foundation, is among the 27 awardees. The prize also went to communication and PR managers of the European Commission, the EU Delegation to Serbia, the government of Montenegro, the Prado Museum in Madrid, Microsoft, Al Jazeera Balkans and the University of Mostar. Dragana Crvenica, head of the Communications Department of Erste Bank AD Podgorica, also gained an award. The PRO PR GLOBE AWARDS honour individuals who “contribute through their work to a better perception and positioning of the public relations profession on a local and global level”. Unlike standard awards in this sector, they are given to individuals rather than projects. Winners are nominated by former recipients of the award; the selection committee consists of renowned European and regional PR experts and there are no application fees. The award ceremony scheduled for the end of March was postponed to 2021 due to the pandemic. Congratulations!
Jakob Lena Knebl and Ashley Hans Scheirl represent Austria at the 59th Venice Art Biennale in 2020 On 25 February, then State Secretary for Culture Ulrike Lunacek announced that Jakob Lena Knebl and Ashley Hans Scheirl would jointly stage the Austrian Pavilion for the 59th Venice Art Biennale in 2021, with Mumok director Karola Kraus as the curator. The biennial was later postponed to 2022 due to the coronavirus pandemic. Following a new selection procedure, a committee of experts made their choice from a total of 60 submissions. Ashley Hans Scheirl’s works are playful, shrill and sensuous, combining abstract and figurative forms of expression with queer sexuality and text fragments on philosophy and economics. Her works thus represent a new and significant development within Austrian art at the interface between painting, performance and film. After years in New York and London, the artist, who was born in Salzburg in 1956, now lives in Vienna, where she holds a chair in Contextual Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts. In 2012, Scheirl participated in the world’s most important exhibition of contemporary art, documenta 14 in Kassel and Athens. Several of Scheirl’s artworks are housed in the Kontakt Collection of Erste Group and ERSTE Foundation. Scheirl realised her first public art project for the Erste Campus. She received the Austrian Art Award for Visual Arts in 2019.
86
