What Pipeline received the 2014 New York NADA Artadia Award, a $4,000 unrestricted merit-based award selected at the 2014 edition of NADA New York. A jury comprised of two internationally renowned curators, Ingrid Schaffner, Chief Curator, Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania, and Carin Kuoni, Director, Vera List Center for Art and Politics, The New School for Public Engagement, determined the award winner.

“NADA offers a scale so conducive to seeing, in some depth, a lot of great work by individual artists; however, we decided to award the Artadia Prize to What Pipeline. It represents to us a relevant and future-oriented model of how artists collaborate locally and beyond by establishing networks that operate both outside of, and through, the art world’s centers,” note Carin Kuoni and Ingrid Schaffner. “Activated by different contexts—studio, exhibition, gallery, art fair—these ad hoc aggregates of artists perform different functions within our very complex art system. And while Detroit may have its own gravitational pull right now, What Pipeline seems purposefully situated to exert pressure from within—and upon—this most utopian of dystopias on contemporary culture at large.