Curate NYC 2011

In an effort to promote New York City’s emerging visual artist community, NYCEDC ran Curate NYC, an annual competition to select a number of New York City emerging visual artists to display their artwork on certain NYCEDC managed properties. The arts contest launched on October 6, 2011, and the deadline was on November 8, 2011. View digital versions of the 150 winning entries at the official Curate NYC website.

In 2010, Curate NYC received nearly 1,200 submissions. This year, the program expanded by showcasing emerging artists' work in additional venues as well as allowing artists to sell their work via the Curate NYC website. This competition will once again be comprised of a juried selection of artwork followed by a multi-venue exhibition at galleries throughout the City, as well as online exhibitions on the project website.

For this year’s Curate NYC, museum-quality postcard reproductions of the top 150 entries will be exhibited at:

• Rush Art Gallery & Resource Center, Manhattan, December 1-10

Selected postcards, alongside actual work by additional Curate NYC artists, will be exhibited at galleries in all five boroughs of New York City:

• Bill Hodges Gallery, Manhattan, December 2 -11
• Art at Bay, Staten Island, December 3 -18
• Longwood Art Gallery @ Hostos, Bronx, December 7-February 1, 2012
• Like the Spice, Brooklyn, December 8 -18
• Crossing Art, Queens, December 10-31

All exhibitions are free and open to the public. Additionally, all entries – including the artwork, profile, and weblink of each applicant – will remain on the program website, www.CurateNYC.org, for ongoing review by art professionals and the general public for the foreseeable future.

The judges reviewed all entries online and voted along four criteria: originality, technical skill, a personal voice or vision, and positive subjective impact upon the judges. Entries were considered across visual media including photography, film/video stills, drawings, installations, mixed-media, paintings, printmaking, and sculpture.

Curate NYC was announced by Mayor Bloomberg in September 2009 as part of a suite of initiatives designed to strengthen the City’s cultural sector. Full Spectrum Experience, Inc., a nonprofit arts organization that creates career-building platforms for artists and new forums for arts audiences, was selected to develop and produce the program in response to a Request for Proposals issued by NYCEDC.

For more information, visit www.CurateNYC.org or Curate NYC's Facebook page.