Friday, March 04, 2011

Pastel Society of America: Call for Entries - 39th Annual Exhibition


The Pastel Society of America has called for entries for its 39th Annual Exhibition which is to be held at the National Arts Club in New York (6th September 2011 - 1st October 2011).  Over £25,000 in prizes will be awarded for selected work.
A primary mandate of the Pastel Society of America (PSA) is to provide a forum for the exhibition of works by the most accomplished of pastel artists in the U.S. and abroad. The Annual Open Juried Exhibition for Pastels Only is held during the month of September in the main gallery of The National Arts Club, a historic mansion located in the Gramercy Park area of Manhattan.

Accepted entries usually number 170 to 200 pastels out of more than 1,000 entries.
This is one exhibition I'd love to see - I very nearly made it one year but the timings didn't quite work out.

It's interesting to see yet another art society which has moved to all digital entry this year. Below are the details of how to enter.

Who can enter?
  • This exhibition is open to all artists, members and non-members
Conditions of Entry
  • Medium:  Traditional soft pastels only - no oil pastelsArtwork must be predominantly (80%) pastel.
  • Original artwork only -  This gets an exclamation mark on the prospectus!  One can only assume there have been some naughty people in the past.  That means:
    • work done in a school or under the supervision of a tutor is not eligible and will be rejected.  
    • Work copied from published photographs will be rejected.
  • Subject matter - all styles eligible from traditional to contemporary
  • Number of works: Artists can submit up to three entries.
  • Acceptable media: Pastels, including oil pastels, charcoal, pencil, conté, sanguine, or any dry media.
  • Acceptable Framing:  Work must be firmly framed with screw eyes and strong wire, ready to hang. 
  • Size of work:  Size limit including frame: 48" in either direction. Oversized work will not be juried. If a framed painting arrives that exceeds size limitations, it will NOT be hung.
  • Price of work: Work must be for sale – no NFS or POR.
How to enter

The big change for 2011 is that this year ALL entries have to be submitted in digital format - on a CD - by mail.  

Email entries are NOT accepted.  printed photographs are NOT accepted.  There are very precise details as to how to mail.

The digital entry must conform to the following
  • Format:  JPEG image @ 300dpi on a (non-returnable) CD; image size of 900 pixels on longest side
  • File name:  last name_first initial_#1_painting title.jpg  (and so on)
  • What to include: an accurate representation of your work. (Paintings submitted for exhibition must be identical to selected work; no substitutions permitted)
  • What to exclude:  all mats, frames and easels
  • Label:  label CD in permanent ink with artist's full name and names of paintings
  • Fee payable - see prospectus for details
Important dates
  • 3rd June 2011 - Postmarked deadline for CD entry
  • 31st August 2011 - Receiving Days (10am - 1pm only)
  • 6th September - Exhibition Opens
  • 25th September - Awards Dinner
  • 1st October - Collection of accepted/unsold work work
Who are the Judges?
  • Michael Gormley is the Editorial Director of the American Artist magazine group. Gormley served as Dean of the New York Academy and was Vice President of Education, Institute of Classical Architecture and Classical America. He has a Master of Fine Arts from Pratt Institute. He maintains an active career as a painter.
  • Mark D. Mitchell is the Assistant Curator and Manager, Center for American Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art.  Formerly the Associate Curator of Nineteenth-Century Art at the National Academy Museum of New York, Mitchell received a BA from the University of Amherst and a doctorate from Princeton University.
  • Peter Trippi is editor of Fine Art Connoisseur, a bimonthly magazine that serves collectors of historical and contemporary representational- painting, sculpture, drawings and prints. He holds an MA from NYU in Visual Arts Administration as well as an MA from The Courtauld Institute of Art, London.
The Society creates a CD of the whole exhibition which will be available for sale later in the year.

1 comment:

  1. I very much wanted to enter last year but couldn't get around the delivery requirements for accepted works...finding someone to actually take the work on the specified date to the show venue and then pick it up and pack it and ship it back to me in the event of it not selling. I mean, there is a very good chance I wouldn't have been accepted but I have been in enough shows that I stood some chance so I didn't know what to do. I live out on Vancouver Island and don't know anyone in the exhibition area who would have done all that for me. Are you entering?

    ReplyDelete

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