OR decades now, Robert Rauschenberg has held the highest artistic honors: for starters, pride of place on the walls of institutions like MoMA, the Guggenheim and the Tate, not to mention in an assortment of well-thumbed art-world memoirs. But recently the artist fielded a more obscure accolade: the Premio Internacional Julio González, one of a multitude of new art prizes awarded by the museum world to living artists.

The choice seemed bemusing. Had the bestower, the Institut Valencia d'Art Modern, just discovered Mr. Rauschenberg? Hadn't the artist won the granddaddy of art prizes, the Venice Biennale, in 1964? Or was the prize intended mainly to lure the artist and drum up publicity for the museum, in tandem with a Rauschenberg exhibition that opened there two weeks ago?

Over the last few years, museums large and small have started awarding their own prizes, usually named after the institution and sponsored by a corporate donor, to capitalize on the glamour associated with contemporary art. To burnish their appeal, many of the new awards are modeled on the Tate Modern's venerable Turner Prize, which has evolved into a nationally televised event that attracts celebrity presenters like Madonna and habitually polarizes the British press.

Chrissie Iles, curator of film and video at the Whitney Museum of American Art and herself a former Turner Prize juror, said that excitement did not take hold quickly. When the first Turner was presented in 1984 (to Malcom Morley), "it wasn't hip and trendy by any stretch of the imagination," she said. "But then cool Britannia, the Tate Modern and the shifting of the Turner Prize into high gear all happened at the same time, when British culture became free from the Thatcherite era and shifted into another direction."

The attendant buzz didn't go unnoticed elsewhere in the art world. "When we started our prize in 1996, the Turner Prize was essentially the model," said Nancy Spector, curator of contemporary art at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, whose foundation oversees the annual Hugo Boss Prize award. (The 2004 winner, the artist Rirkrit Tiravanija, is the focus of a show running at the Guggenheim through May 22.)

"We wanted something that had the sense of competition," Ms. Spector said. "We wanted that sense of who's going to win, people having opinions about it, creating a dialogue that raises awareness about contemporary art."

The prizes seem a winning proposition for everyone involved. The artists generally benefit from the exposure, the museum gains a reputation for supporting new work, and the sponsors, like Hugo Boss, the German fashion company, gain cachet by virtue of association with prestigious art. Indeed, the new art prize circuit has a circular quality, with many of the same artists nominated again and again, and many of the same jurors serving on multiple committees.

"It's a network thing," said Willem De Rooij, one half of the Dutch art duo De Rijke/De Rooij, nominated for last year's Hugo Boss Prize, named after the fashion label and with the Guggenheim the host.

Some of the newer awards seem to be in a competition on the generosity scale. Though the Hugo Boss Prize, established in 1996, has held firm at $50,000, the Whitney Museum of American Art's Bucksbaum Award made its debut in 2000 at $100,000. Even the venerable Turner is feeling the heat, last year doubling its total prize sum to £40,000 (about $75,000), which was promptly matched by the new Artes Mundi prize in Walesin 2004. In the Netherlands, the Bonnefanten Museum's Vincent award, founded in 2000, was briefly the Continent's topper (50,000 euros, or $65,000) until the blueOrange Prize in Germany joined the fray last September with a pot of 77,000 euros, or $100,00.

Participants have begun to worry about the insular nature of the awards circuit, said Dan Cameron, a curator at New Museum of Contemporary Art who is another frequently requested judge. "A lot of these prizes are available only by nomination," he said. "If there's no one out there in the art world who's got an eye out on your work, you don't get nominated."

Rachel Lehmann of the Lehmann Maupin Gallery in New York said she had detected signs of prize fatigue. "There's a moment where there are too many fishes swimming in the sea," she said, "and the exclusivity or the importance of it really diminishes."

Regardless of the ultimate impact , Kutlug Ataman, a Turner nominee and winner of the recent Carnegie International, said he appreciated the gesture. "It is a sense of achievement, and you can't escape that, even if it were a neighborhood recognition cup," he said.

Order an Online Edition of The NY Times & Read at Your Leisure