ASPEN, CO.- Over 300 of the world’s top art collectors, wine connoisseurs, artists, gallery owners, museum directors, curators, and global business leaders come together in Aspen for three days of striking events to celebrate the Aspen Art Museum’s 8th annual ArtCrush summer benefit gala. ArtCrush and related events, WineCrush, PreviewCrush, and AfterpartyCrush, will be held August 1 – 3, 2012, with the main ArtCrush gala taking place on Friday, August 3, featuring the presentation of the 2012 Aspen Award for Art to renowned artist Tom Sachs. Friday’s event includes silent and live auctions, and a seated dinner. 2012 art auction items are being donated by such esteemed artists as Norman Bluhm, Kathy Butterly, Sarah Cain, Nigel Cooke, E.V. Day, Marc Dennis, Carroll Dunham, Eric Fischl, Morgan Fisher, Tom Friedman, Ryan Gander, Katy Grannan, Mark Grotjahn, Nir Hod, Jim Hodges, Joyce Pensato, Emilio Perez, Rob Pruitt, (AAA Honoree) Tom Sachs, Katy Schimert, Stephen Shore, David Shrigley, Monika Sosnowska, Fred Tomaselli, Christopher Wool, Amelie von Wulffen, Cerith Wyn Evans, Haegue Yang, Dustin Yellin, and more. The evening’s live auction will be conducted by Sotheby’s European Senior International Specialist of Contemporary Art Oliver Barker.

Special ArtCrush-related events precede the Friday gala, beginning with WineCrush, hosted annually by John and Amy Phelan in their contemporary Aspen home and featuring the couple’s cutting-edge art collection. The remarkable limited-attendance evening features wine and food presented by master sommeliers led by Jay Fletcher, Executive Director of Fine Wine and Master Sommelier for Southern Wine and Spirits, who guides guests through rare vintages and pairings. PreviewCrush is a cocktail reception held at Aspen’s Baldwin Gallery and hosted by gallery owner Richard Edwards, that allows guests to preview the following evening’s ArtCrush gala live and silent auction offerings.

2012 Aspen Award for Art: Tom Sachs
Tom Sachs is a sculptor, installation artist, and painter known for his innovative examination and questioning of icons of capitalist culture and systems of daily life. Born in New York in 1966, Sachs studied at the Architectural Association in London and received a B.A. from Bennington College, Vermont, in 1989. He currently lives and works in New York. Evident in Sachs' practice are conceptual underpinnings that address both serious and profound issues and call special attention to the commodification of abstract concepts and provoke reflection on utopian follies and dystopian realities. Sach’s work has been included in many exhibitions in the U.S. and abroad, and is featured in the collections of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Centre Georges Pompidou, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Astrup Fearnley Museet for Moderne Kunst, Oslo. He has had solo exhibitions of his work at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum (2009), Fondazione Prada, Milan (2006), Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin (2003), the Bohen Foundation, New York (2002), and SITE Santa Fe (1999). Sachs is represented by Sperone Westwater, New York; Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris; and Aspen’s Baldwin Gallery.

From May 16 through June 17, 2012, Sachs’ SPACE PROGRAM: MARS was on view within the Park Avenue Armory's 55,000-square-foot Wade Thompson Drill Hall in New York City. Sachs’ first SPACE PROGRAM installation launched in 2007 with a “mission to the moon” at Gagosian Gallery in Los Angeles, which was a reimagining of the first moon landing in 1969.

Past recipients of the Aspen Award for Art include artists Roni Horn (2011), Marilyn Minter (2010), Fred Tomaselli (2009), Ed Ruscha (2008), Jim Hodges (2007), Tony Feher (2006), and Richard Tuttle (2005).