The award is named after the art historian, curator and MoMa's first director Alfred H. Barr Jr. and is awarded by the College Art Association (CAA) from New York as part of the CAA 2017 Awards for Distinction 2017, which honor the outstanding achievements and accomplishments of individual artists, art historians, authors, conservators, curators, and critics whose efforts transcend their individual disciplines and contribute to the profession as a whole and to the world at large. The recipients will be awarded at a special ceremony to be held on 15 February during Convocation at CAA's 105th Annual Conference in New York.

The awarded Slovenian publication is titled 'NSK from Kapital to Capital. Neue Slowenische Kunst – and event of the final decade of Yugoslavia'and was designed to guide to a very successful exhibition in the Ljubljana-based Modern Gallery in 2015. It describes the work of NSK, an art collective founded in 1980s, from the earliest works of the Laibach band and the establishment of NSK, which drew inspiration from symbols, codes and motives of opposing ideologies and art traditions.

The publication comprises the so-called primary documents, artefacts from the era as well as descriptions of the social context, which enable the reader to get a new insight into the evolution and reception of NSK through the decade marked with social unrest that led into the fall of Yugoslavia and socialism. The editors Zdenka Badovinac, Eda Čufer in Anthony Gardner collected contributions from a number of writers, who contextualise primary documents in their writings, as well as (reprinted) texts of early critics and commentators, which expand and strengthen the scientific understanding of Slovenian art and culture in the 1980s.

M. K., MMC; translated by K. Z.