The 2026 Spirit of Giving Committee (pictured above) acquired two works for the V&A’s Photographic Centre
Spirit Now London has announced Annette Messager and Stanislava Pinchuk as the winners of its 2026 Acquisition Prize, presented at Frieze London and Frieze Masters in partnership with the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A). Chaired by Marie-Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre, the fifth edition turned its attention to photography, with both winning works to be donated to the V&A’s Photographic Centre.
The selected works are Annette Messager’s Mes Voeux (avec effusion), 1989-2026, and five works from Stanislava Pinchuk’s series Each Apparition, Searches for an Eye, 2025.
Follow LUX on Instagram: @luxthemagazine
Each year, on the opening day of Frieze London, a determined group of collectors gains access to the fair an hour before the public, not to buy for themselves but to give. This year, on the Collectors’ Preview Day, members of the Spirit of Giving Committee, chaired by Marie-Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre and guided by Fiona Rogers, Parasol Foundation Curator of Women in Photography at the V&A, visited the booths of the shortlisted artists. They then continued to Frieze Masters, where they deliberated and voted in the presence of Rogers and Duncan Forbes, Head of Photography at the V&A.
Annette Messager’s Mes Voeux (avec effusion), 1989-2026
The committee is drawn from Spirit Now London, an invitation-only art community founded in 2015 to support cultural institutions, women artists and emerging artistic practices. The 2026 Committee members were Amy Ainscough, Areti Dalacouras, Elizabeth Belfer, Francesca Brignone, Maria Luisa Cain, Carla du Manoir, Maryam Esiler, Andrea Hamilton, Vanessa Mitchell Thompson, Véronique Namy, Camilla Partridge, Gisèle Phillips, Ana Sarria Irairoz, Niloufar Bakhtiar Bakhtiari, Warly Tomei, Lara Veroner and Catherine Wingfield.
Read more: Simon de Pury interviews French artist JR
Since launching the Spirit of Giving in 2022, the Prize has gifted works to a succession of leading British institutions. Sylvia Snowden’s work went to the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, followed by Bronwyn Katz and Rene Matić for the Hepworth Wakefield, Bambou Gill, Asemahle Ntlonti and Shafei Xia for the Women’s Art Collection at Murray Edwards College, Cambridge, and, last year, Madge Gill and Stella Snead for the National Portrait Gallery. This year’s collaboration with the V&A focuses on women photographers and expanded photography, at a time when museum acquisition budgets face increasing constraints.
“Since 2022, the Spirit Now London Acquisition Prize has reminded us of the power of collective generosity of private individuals,” said Marie-Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre, Founder and Director of Spirit Now London. “Supporting women artists and giving their work a home within public institutions is at the heart of our mission.”
One of the five photographs from Stanislava Pinchuk’s series Each Apparition, Searches for an Eye, 2025
The first winner, Annette Messager, represented by Albarran Bourdais, was born in 1943 in Berck, France, and has been a major presence on the French art scene since the 1970s. Her installations assemble photographs, small objects and found materials, often reflecting on the place of women in society. In 2005, she represented France at the Venice Biennale, winning the Golden Lion for Casino, an installation that transformed the French Pavilion. The Mes Voeux series, from which the V&A’s work comes, hangs photographs of fragments of the body from strings. The acquired piece consists of eight framed black-and-white gelatin silver prints and three framed writings, with glass and strings.
Read more: Joseph Kosuth in conversation with Maryam Eisler
The second winner, Stanislava Pinchuk, represented by Ames Yavuz, was born in Kharkiv, Ukraine, in 1988 and now lives and works in Sarajevo. Each Apparition, Searches for an Eye grew out of her 2023 deployment to witness combat training for the Armed Forces of Ukraine as the Official War Artist of Australia. The series comprises 100 photo-portraits of soldiers, whose faces she blurred by hand to protect them from both the public eye and enemy facial recognition. In doing so, she has said, she committed each hidden face to her own memory. Each work is a small pigment print, just 4.5 x 3.5 cm, mounted in Perspex with stainless steel.
Both works will now join the V&A’s permanent collection, ensuring that contemporary photographic practice remains accessible to future generations. Once again, a group of well-dressed, determined collectors spent the first hour of Frieze quietly giving something away.
