The Department of Art and Art History will celebrate the first Nebraska National Collegiate Juried Art Exhibition and the opening the new Medici gallery on Sept. 7. Both events will be in Richards Hall.
The Nebraska National exhibition will be open Sept. 7-28 in Richards Hall’s Eisentrager•Howard Gallery. The exhibit will showcase the best undergraduate artwork from students in the United States and Canada. A total of 186 students from 37 states and two provinces submitted 495 art pieces for exhibition. Jurors selected 132 pieces from 97 artists, including 26 ceramics works, 51 photographs and 55 printmaking designs.
“We got an excellent response for the first year of the competition. There is a wide variety of interesting work,” said Pete Pinnell, interim chair of art and art history.
The department intends to make this show an annual event. Each year’s exhibition will feature three different categories on a two-year rotating basis. This year’s categories are ceramics, printmaking and photography. Next year, the categories will be painting/drawing, sculpture and new genres.
Long-time department supporters Dan and Barbara Howard, of Lincoln, created the Howard Awards for Excellence for the first year of the competition. The awards — $1,000 first prize in each of the three categories and a $1,500 “Best of Show” prize — are intended to both reward excellence and to attract students to enter the competition.
Pinnell said the exhibition meets two important goals for the department.
“It will expose our students to the best student art work from across the country, and I hope it will also entice the general public to attend our openings and see what we’re doing here in the department,” he said.
In addition to the gallery show, an online catalog for the exhibition will be available at http://www.unl.edu/art.
The Nebraska National will have a special First Friday opening on Sept. 7 from 6-8 p.m. The Howard Awards for Excellence will be announced at 7 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.
The First Friday event will also celebrate the opening of the Medici Gallery, also on the first floor of Richards Hall. A ribbon cutting and dedication will take place at 6:30 p.m. Sept. 7, during the opening of the Nebraska National show. This event will also be free and open to the public.
The $10,000 cost of the renovation was paid for by Medici, a friends group that supports the Department of Art and Art History.
“The new gallery is being named to honor Medici and the wonderful people who have served with this group over the last 20 years,” said Pinnell. “These volunteers have given their time, money and expertise to support our programs, and we’d like to recognize their contribution.”
Medici will be celebrating its 20th anniversary in the spring of 2013. During its existence Medici has raised nearly $200,000 for the department.
The first exhibition in the Medici Gallery will be an invitational show of UNL students organized by faculty members in painting, photography and printmaking. The show is tentatively titled “2D: Student Work from UNL” and will stay up until Sept. 28.
For more information, go to http://www.unl.edu/art or call (402) 472-5522.
More details at: http://go.unl.edu/7ev