Hasta La Ideas

Detail from Taryn Simon’s 2010 work “Movies, Animated (Pirated).”

Who needs another gold-plated statuette or crystalline slab when you can have an artwork by the likes of Tom Otterness, Inka Essenhigh, and Will Ryman? That’s what winners at the Tribeca Film Festival will take home in lieu of trophies, thanks to the festival’s Artist Awards Program. Among the paintings, photographs, prints, and sculptures donated this year are Taryn Simon‘s Plexiglas-encased photos of pirated movies (a chilling sight for any filmmaker) that she clinically captured for her Contraband series during four nonstop days of shooting at New York’s JFK Airport. They’ll be awarded to the winner of the Best Narrative Short category, while the jury’s top pick for Best Documentary Short will receive one cent—Otterness’s “Big Penny” (1990), a three-foot tall bronze. Nate Lowman donated “Double Happiness” (2009), a pair of gear-like shapes printed on metallic paper that are bound to please the person deemed Best New Narrative Director. Also up for grabs are works by Robert De Niro Sr., Stephen Hannock, Mark Innerst, Clifford Ross, Sarah Crowner, and Jeff Chien-Hsing Liao. Catch these art “prizes” before they make on it to the directors’ walls: the works go on display tomorrow at the New York Academy of Art.

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