ArtPrize: when downtown Grand Rapids becomes one giant art show

Every fall, downtown Grand Rapids turns into a city-sized art gallery. It’s called ArtPrize, and it started in 2009 as a bold experiment: invite artists from anywhere in the world, let them show their work all over downtown — in museums, parks, hotels, restaurants, bars, even storefront windows and on bridges — and let regular people, not just art experts, help pick the winners by voting. Almost nobody thought it would work. It did. The first ArtPrize drew more than 1,200 artists and 200,000 visitors, and offered one of the biggest cash prizes in the entire art world. It’s still going strong today: hundreds of artists, hundreds of thousands of visitors, and well over $7 million in prize money handed out since it began. (Winners are now chosen partly by public vote and partly by a panel of art experts.) The idea came from Rick DeVos, a member of one of Grand Rapids’ best-known families. For about three weeks each fall it’s free to walk around, look, and vote — the 2026 event runs from mid-September into early October (artprize.org).