Rob Pruitt made art by organizing a flea market at 2007’s Frieze Art Fair and offering cocaine (for his Cocaine Buffet) at an opening in 1998. Now he has announced that he will host “Rob Pruitt’s First Annual Art Awards” as part of a “performance-based artwork” in conjunction with the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, alternative art space White Columns, and the arts education group Studio in a School.

The awards will be given for work completed from Jan. 2008 to June 2009 in 10 categories, including Artist of the Year, Curator of the Year, and New Artist of the Year. Some of the nominees are associates of Pruitt, such as his gallerist, Gavin Brown, who helped curate “Who’s Afraid of Jasper Johns?” at the Tony Shafrazi Gallery with Urs Fischer (another Brown artist), who is nominated in the Artist of the Year category.

A committee of art-world professionals will select the winners of nine of the awards. The Rob Pruitt Award, bestowed by the artist himself, will be the one exception to that process. The museum also announced that lifetime achievement awards will be presented to Joan Jonas and dealer Kasper König.

Pruitt plans to announce the winners at a live event in “the format of a Hollywood awards ceremony” on Oct. 29 that will be featured on Ovation TV.

The full list of nominees is as follows:

Artist of the Year
• Louise Bourgeois
• Urs Fischer
• Dan Graham
• Mary Heilmann

Curator of the Year
• Klaus Biesenbach
• Daniel Birnbaum
• Connie Butler
• Massimiliano Gioni

Exhibitions Outside the United States
• Francis Bacon, Tate Britain, London
• Jeff Koons, Versailles, Château de Versailles, France
• "Mike Kelley: Educational Complex Onwards: 1995–2008," Wiels Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels
• "Wolfgang Tillmans: Lighter," Hamburger Bahnhof, Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin

Group Show of the Year, Gallery
• "A Twilight Art," Harris Lieberman, New York
• "Who’s Afraid of Jasper Johns?" Tony Shafrazi Gallery, New York
• "Your Gold Teeth II," Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York
• "ZERO in New York," Sperone Westwater, New York

Group Show of the Year, Museum
• "After Nature," New Museum, New York
• "The Pictures Generation, 1974–1984," Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
• "The Quick and the Dead," Walker Art Center, Minneapolis
• "WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution," P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, New York

New Artist of the Year
• Elad Lassry
• Daniel McDonald
• Marlo Pascual
• Ryan Trecartin

The Rob Pruitt Award
• To be announced the evening of October 29, 2009

Solo Show of the Year, Gallery
• Cindy Sherman, Metro Pictures, New York
• "Manzoni: A Retrospective," Gagosian Gallery, New York
• Paul Sharits, Greene Naftali Gallery, New York
• "Picasso: Mosqueteros," Gagosian Gallery, New York

Solo Show of the Year, Museum
• "Dan Graham: Beyond," Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
• "Lawrence Weiner: As Far as the Eye Can See," Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
• "Live Forever: Elizabeth Peyton, New Museum," New York
• "Martin Kippenberger: The Problem Perspective," Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and Museum of Modern Art, New York

Writer of the Year
• Tim Griffin
• John Kelsey
• Walter Robinson
• Jerry Saltz