Once again the Swope Art Museum is proudly hosting the Annual Student Exhibition.  An institution in itself, this exhibition has been recurring for forty-three years! That’s longer than any of the exhibiting students and most of the art teachers have been alive. And although the exhibition has been going on for so very long, we always get questions about how the works of art are chosen for this exhibition.  Well, I’ll explain…

The K-8 art teachers select one work of art for every 100 students enrolled in an art class. Every selected work from the K-8 group is included in the exhibition.

The high school art teachers are allowed to select as many student works of art as they feel are exhibition quality.  This works out to be between ten and fifty works of art per teacher per school.   Once at the Museum, every high school work of art is unpacked and displayed in the attic.   The juror is selected by the Swope Art Museum’s Curator of Collections and Exhibitions and is specifically chosen to be non-biased and have a background in a wide variety of art.

This years juror is Bernard Hagedorn of Vincennes University. Mr. Hagedorn is a sculptor and the former director of the University Gallery at Vincennes.

The juror is tasked with selecting between 60 and 70 works of art for inclusion in the exhibition, as well as awarding up to three awards per category and Best in Show.

Here is Mr Hagedorn with a few selected paintings for this year’s Annual Student Exhibition.  Please check back soon, the complete list of accepted high school work as well as the high school award winners will be posted soon!