Grand Forks, ND — Join us for this annual exhibition, on display February 5 – 22, celebrating the artists from our region. Each year the exhibition features dozens of paintings, sculptures, photographs, crafts, works on paper, and textiles from local artists and beyond. The exhibition has become one of the Museum’s most popular with hundreds of friends, family and community visiting the galleries to discover unexpected treasures. New this Year: There will be two prizes awarded: the NDMOA Award selected by Museum Staff, and a People’s Choice Award. For the latter award, all visitors will be asked to vote on a favorite piece in the exhibition. Winners for both awards, will be announced through our social media platforms after the exhibition closes and an award certificate will be issued with the prizes. Last year, Zhimin Guan received the People’s Choice award for his painting, North Shore Lake Scape.
To celebrate this community exhibition the Museum will host an All-Day Open House on Thursday, February 12 from 9 am to 5 pm on Giving Hearts Day. Join us for snacks and refreshments throughout the day with four informal guided tours held at 10 am, noon, 2 pm, and 4 pm, along with pop-up art activities and scavenger hunts for all ages. This is also a great time to pick out your favorite artwork and cast your vote for the People’s Choice award. Everyone is welcome to this free event. Pay as you go parking is available in the Museum lot and parking is free after 4 pm. For those also participating in Giving Hearts Day, donors of any size will receive 25% off in the Museum Gift Shop and donors giving $100 and above will receive a free lunch entrée in the Café. And, as always, everyone receives $1 off drinks in the Café from 3 – 5 pm for Happy Hour.
The Museum opens its doors once a year to allow community members and interested friends from afar to participate in this non-juried exhibition. More broadly, this jury-free show provides a dynamic and inclusive process of hosting exhibitions. The Museum celebrates this opportunity to showcase and promote regional artists. All artwork in the exhibition is for sale with prices set by the artists. Proceeds will be split equally between the Museum and artist, and all work can be picked up following the exhibition between February 25 – 28.
It is essential that we at the North Dakota Museum of Art discover the work of our own artists who haven’t yet crossed our radar. Our audience is interested in what artists they already know are up to. Artists benefit from seeing their own artwork installed in the company of their peers. And the Museum needs to take the temperature of our artistic community, what is happening at this moment in time on the Northern Plains. Imagine an exciting and eclectic array of art from the Red River Valley and surrounding areas to brighten our days during these long winter months.
This exhibition honors Walter Hopps (1932-2005), one of America’s most beloved and creative curators, whose 1978 "Thirty-Six Hours" was among the first exhibitions to question the traditional methods for selecting artists for an exhibition. An admirer of the anti-establishment, Dada artist Marcel Duchamp, Hopps no doubt was also paying tribute to some of the ground-breaking jury-free exhibitions that Duchamp inspired, including the notorious exhibition that placed the work "Fountain" into the annals of art history, in which Duchamp submitted a porcelain urinal signed “R. Mutt.”