Harrisburg, PA – The State Museum of Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania Heritage Foundation invite artists and artisans to submit applications to exhibit their work in Art of the State: Pennsylvania 2020. The annual juried exhibition boasts a tradition of presenting highly creative art chosen by a distinguished panel of jurors.
The exhibition will run from Sunday, June 14 to Sunday, September 13 at The State Museum in Harrisburg. Artists who are Pennsylvania residents will compete in five categories: painting, work on paper, photography, sculpture and craft.
Entries must be submitted online. Information is available at www.statemuseumpa.org. Click on "2020 Art of the State Call for Entries" in the Quick Links list at the bottom of the homepage. The application deadline is Friday, February 28.
More than $6,000 in cash awards will be presented at an opening reception at The State Museum on Sunday, June 14. A first prize of $500, second prize of $300, and third prize of $200 will be awarded in each of the five categories. The William D. Davis Memorial Award for Drawing in the amount of $250 and the Art Docents' Choice Award of $250 will also be presented. The State Museum will select a Purchase Award by choosing featured artwork for its permanent collection.
Selection jurors will review and rate all artwork submitted. Those artists with the highest ratings in each category will be featured in the exhibition. An awards juror will determine the prize winners in each of the categories.
This year's selection jurors are:
Lauren Frances Adams
Adams is a painter and installation artist who teaches painting at Maryland Institute College of Art. She earned her BFA at University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and completed her MFA in 2007 at Carnegie Mellon University. Her work engages political and social histories through iconic images and domestic ornament. She has exhibited at Nymans House National Trust, The Walters Art Museum, the Mattress Factory, and the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis. Recent projects include Smack Mellon in Brooklyn and a site-specific collaborative public art project with Stewart Watson at a historic tavern museum in Alexandria, Virginia. She is the recipient of a Joan Mitchell Foundation MFA award and a 2016 Pollock-Krasner Foundation award. She is the winner of the 2016 Trawick Prize. Lauren is a founding member of Ortega y Gasset Projects, a project space in New York.
Clara Lieu
Lieu is an adjunct professor at the Rhode Island School of Design and a partner at Artprof.org, a free website for learning visual arts. Her drawings, prints, and sculpture have been exhibited at the International Print Center New York, Bromfield Gallery, the Danforth Museum of Art, Mark Miller Gallery, the Currier Museum of Art, Childs Gallery, and the Davis Museum. Lieu has received artist grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation, and the Puffin Foundation.
Ron Tarver
Tarver is visiting assistant professor of Studio Art at Swarthmore College. He previously had been a staff photojournalist for 32 years at The Philadelphia Inquirer, sharing a 2012 Pulitzer Prize. While at the Inquirer he was nominated for three additional Pulitzers and honored with awards from World Press Photos and the Sigma Delta Chi Award of the Society of Professional Journalists, among others. He is coauthor of the book We Were There: Voices of African American Veterans, published by Harper Collins. Tarver is recipient of the prestigious Pew Fellowship in the Arts. He has received funding and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and two Independence Foundation fellowships. His fine art has been exhibited nationally and internationally and is included in many museum, corporate and private collections including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Studio Museum in Harlem.
This year's awards juror is:
Susan E. Cahan
Cahan is an art historian, curator and educator who specializes in contemporary art and the history of museums. She is dean and professor of art history at Temple University Tyler School of Art and Architecture. Cahan holds a PhD from the Graduate Center, City University of New York and a BA in art history and English from Tufts University. Her research focuses on the relationship between social and artistic change and the confluence of factors that shape the way culture is imagined, discussed and advanced. Cahan served as dean for the arts at Yale College, 2009–2017. Prior to this she was the Des Lee Professor in Contemporary Art and an associate dean at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. From 1994 to 2003, she was a faculty member at the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College and has served as a visiting professor in the department of art at the University of California, Los Angeles. From 1996 to 2001 Cahan served as the senior curator for the private collection of Eileen and Peter Norton and director of arts programs for the Peter Norton Family Foundation. She has held positions at the Museum of Modern Art, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She is a recipient of an Arts Writer's Grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, among other awards.
The Pennsylvania Heritage Foundation is the nonprofit partner of the Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission, the state agency charged with collecting, preserving, researching and interpreting the treasures of Pennsylvania. Through private contributions, PHF supports PHMC in protecting and providing access to 24 historic sites and museums, approximately 9 million objects, and more than 250 million archival items.
The State Museum of Pennsylvania, adjacent to the State Capitol in Harrisburg, is one of 24 historic sites and museums administered by Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission as part of the Pennsylvania Trails of History. The State Museum offers expansive collections interpreting Pennsylvania's fascinating heritage. With exhibits examining the dawn of geologic time, the Native American experience, the colonial and revolutionary eras, a pivotal Civil War battleground, and the commonwealth's vast industrial age, The State Museum demonstrates that Pennsylvania's story is America's story.
For more information about the museum, visit The State Museum online or follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
MEDIA CONTACT: Howard Pollman, 717-705-8639