PURITA KALAW-LEDESMA PRIZES IN ART CRITICISM 2025

The 12th year of the Purita Kalaw-Ledesma Prizes in Art Criticism welcomes entries on the theme of Flight.

Flight is often associated with the physical act of being airborne. With such denotation, flight can connote ambition, freedom, escape, or transcendence.

Flight can also refer to a flight of stairs, similarly suggesting ascent. One of the works from the collection of the Kalaw-Ledesma Foundation, Inc. is the 1948 painting of National Artist Cesar Legaspi (1917-1994) titled “Stairway to Heaven,” which depicts the subject. Another part of the collection is Purita Kalaw-Ledesma’s archive—her scrapbooks, in which she diligently cut-and-pasted newspaper articles, photographs, invitations, and other ephemera related to the art world. The first scrapbook (dated 1948 to 1949) includes a clipping of a critique by writer, poet, lawyer, and educator Aurelio S. Alvero (also known by his pen name Magtanggul Asa), who described the painting as such: “It was masterful the way Legaspi wedded both the etherealness of dreaming and desiring and the maddeningness which necessarily accompanies desire unattained.” Indeed, a journey upward is rarely without challenges; progress is not always guaranteed, so it often demands effort and perseverance.

Now in our fifth year of offering a theme rather than a list of exhibits to visit, the annual Ateneo Art Awards – Purita Kalaw-Ledesma Prizes in Art Criticism has always aimed to capture the spirit of the times. The themes over the years reflect this evolving journey: from 2021’s Navigating Crisis: Arts and our Futures during the pandemic, to 2022’s Fresh Winds and New Light: Forecasting Change which imagined a better world, followed by 2023’s Risk exploring the tension between peril and the potential for change, and 2024’s Fluctuation capturing both possibility and unpredictability.

In essence, this year’s theme, Flight is a symbol of transit. Where are we headed next? Where is the art world headed next? And where is art criticism headed next?

The Purita Kalaw-Ledesma Prizes in Art Criticism will have English and Filipino categories. A panel of jurors will shortlist a maximum of six (6) writers from each category. From these lists, winners will be selected by the editors of our partner publications and will be announced during the awarding ceremony scheduled in September 2025.

Two winners will be selected from the English category. The winner of the Purita Kalaw-Ledesma Prize for The Philippine Star will be awarded a regular column under ‘Platforms’ in the Arts and Culture section of the paper, to be published once a month with a total of 12 articles for a year. The winner of the Purita Kalaw-Ledesma Prize for ArtAsiaPacific will be contributing to the bi-monthly publication, with a total of six (6) articles for a year.

One winner selected from the Filipino category will be awarded the Purita Kalaw-Ledesma Prize for Katipunan Journal and will be contributing a total of two (2) articles to the bi-annual research publication.

In addition, two residency partners—Orange Project Naranja Writer’s Residency and The White House Writer’s Residency—will be offering selected winning writers month-long residencies in Bacolod, Negros Occidental and San Antonio, Zambales, respectively, providing an opportunity to immerse with the local art communities in the region.

The Ateneo Art Awards – Purita Kalaw-Ledesma Prizes in Art Criticism was instituted by the Ateneo Art Gallery and Kalaw-Ledesma Foundation, Inc., in partnership with The Philippine Star, as part of the 2014 Ateneo Art Awards. It was named in honor of Purita Kalaw-Ledesma, art patron and founder of the Art Association of the Philippines, who believed in art criticism’s “vital role in the development of culture,” citing its capacity to “guide artists towards new directions and public taste towards the best in past and current artistic output.”

QUALIFICATIONS OF PARTICIPANTS

Employees, whether full-time or contractual, of the Ateneo Art Gallery, Ateneo de Manila University, or Kalaw Ledesma-Foundation, Inc., are not allowed to participate.

Must be based in the Philippines.

To avoid conflicts of interest, participants must not have a regular column and must not hold an editorial post in any broadsheet or local/international magazine. Regular columnists are not allowed to join but contributors, defined as any person whose written work is published with a byline but not identified as a columnist, may join.

Bloggers defined as writers of online journals, websites, or whose written work is published in electronic social media may join.

Past winners of the PKL Prize are not eligible to participate.

Writers who have been shortlisted in the past for the PKL Prize may still submit an entry.

MECHANICS FOR ENTRIES

Entries should be essays with no more than 1,000 words.

Entries must reflect the theme of the Program.

The entry must be written on A4-sized paper. The font should be Arial, Times New Roman, or Book Antiqua, font size 12.

Entries must be submitted digitally as both Word and PDF file attachments with no indication of the identity of the writer on the documents.

Only one original entry is allowed per participant.

The essay should not have been published before on any printed or online platform.
Any entry that has been submitted for consideration in any other writing contest before 30 September 2025 will be disqualified.

Entries must be collated in an accessible Google Drive and submitted at https://go.ateneo.net/PKL2025Entry with the following file formats with the writer’s last name and title of the entry (ex. Dela Cruz - Essay Title) as filename:

Entry in Word document format (ex. Dela Cruz - Essay Title.docx)
Entry in PDF format (ex. Dela Cruz - Essay Title.pdf)

The deadline for submission of entries will be on 30 June 2025 (Monday), 11:59 PM.

Copyright of entries of the shortlisted and winning writers shall be held by the writer jointly with AAG and KLFI. All shortlisted and winning essays will be published online on the Vital Points microsite after the announcement of the shortlist in August 2025.