On August 24, at the seventh annual St. Mortiz Art Masters festival (8/22–31), held in Engadine, Switzerland, Nalini Malani took home the St. Moritz Art Masters Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of her outstanding accomplishments in the field of contemporary art. Created in 2008 by Cartier, the award celebrates new developments in contemporary art, and former recipients have included Ai Weiwei, Oscar Niemeyer, William Klein and Ilya and Emilia Kabakov. With the focus of this year’s St. Mortiz Art Masters on contemporary Indian art, the award could not have come at a better time for Malani. As part of winning the award, she is invited to showcase an exhibition during the festival.

On June 12, New Delhi-based artist Amar Kanwar was named winner of the 2014 Leonore Annenberg Prize for Art and Social Change, an annual award that recognizes artists whose practice promotes social consciousness and an engagement with causes that advance equity and justice. The internationally acclaimed artist and social activist is known for his intricate video essays, which are developed from documentary practices and explore critical socio-political issues of the Indian subcontinent.

Celebrated contemporary Indian artist Jitish Kallat will curate the second edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, India’s first biennale, which is to take place in December 2014. Kallat hopes to bring artists in dialogue with one another to “induce shifts in each other’s perceptions and practices and to collectively expand the tools with which we might propose versions of the world today.”

Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Indian artist Nalini Malani have been named the 2013 laureates for the Fukuoka Arts and Culture Prize, awarded annually to promote exchange between the diverse regions of Asia.

Israel: A contemporary Indian exhibition slated for 2012 is sidetracked when Indian artists call for a boycott.