ARTnotes

RBC Peoples' Choice Award Ceramics

Tonight the annual RBC Emerging Artist People's Choice Award will announce the winner of the Ceramic Artist prize at the Gardiner Museum. The winner receives $10,000 from the Royal Bank of Canada.
What purpose does this type of competition serve? Obviously, it's a high-profile marketing tool for the bank, while the Museum benefits from higher attendance and more intimacy with the world of high finance. But Museum curators, collectors and dealers determine the financial worth of any given artwork at any given time. Are these types of competition intended to provide hoi polloi gallery goers with the illusion that they are participating meaningfully in the process of validating art, deciding what is art?
I think People's Choice awards in the Visual Arts are fun but ultimately not a very meaningful way of recognizing achievement or supporting artists.