Jurying is the judging of artworks before they are exhibited. Jurying often turns an exhibition into a competition, with ribbons and prizes, but there are other reasons to jury. Why Jury? talks about some of those reasons.
Jurying can be a good thing, but it's hard. Judging the relative quality of a product of the heart has the potential to wound an artist deeply. So we at HopeArts tried to think through the jurying process to avoid as much harm as possible. We failed sometimes, of course.
Here are some of the questions we asked:
Jurying can be a good thing, but it's hard. Judging the relative quality of a product of the heart has the potential to wound an artist deeply. So we at HopeArts tried to think through the jurying process to avoid as much harm as possible. We failed sometimes, of course.
Here are some of the questions we asked:
- Should we jury our exhibits for artistic merit? Is showing only the most skillful work more important than encouraging beginners to exhibit?
- Who should be the jurors and what credentials should they have? How do we as an arts ministry communicate our expectations to the jurors? Who has the final authority?
- What does it mean to love our artists and our audiences?
Hope and the Visual Arts by Kate Van Dyke is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at www.hopeva.weebly.com.
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