SAINT LOUIS, MO.- The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis is announcing a call to artists for the Great Rivers Biennial 2010. This innovative program awards up to three area artists with $20,000 each and an exhibition at the Contemporary. The submission deadline is August 15, 2009.

THE PROGRAM
In collaboration with the Gateway Foundation, the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis—committed to energizing the spirit of the art scene in St. Louis—conceived the Great Rivers Biennial Visual Arts Awards Program to provide St. Louis-based artists with a platform to the national art world. The goal of this awards program is to identify talented artists working in St. Louis and provide them with financial assistance, create a broader visibility of their work in both the Midwest and national arts communities, and provide professional support from visiting critics, curators, and dealers. The Contemporary is pleased to announce that the program has expanded this year and will consider artists at all levels of their careers. For the fourth Great Rivers Biennial, as many as three artists will be selected by a panel of distinguished jurors to receive a grant of $20,000 each and the opportunity to exhibit at the Contemporary.

THE CALL TO ARTISTS
Artists in all stages of career development are invited to submit work from any of the following categories: drawing, painting, photography, film and video, printmaking, sculpture, installation, mixed media, and multi-media. To be eligible for participation in the program, artists must reside in the metro area, including St. Louis City and the counties of Saint Louis, Jefferson, and St. Charles in Missouri or St. Clair, Madison, and Monroe counties in Illinois, for at least one year prior to the application deadline of August 15, 2009.

Jurors will review all submissions that meet the eligibility requirements and will select up to three emerging artists meeting the program’s criteria. The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis will install a group exhibition of the work by the selected award winners in April 2010 and will also produce accompanying gallery guide materials for the artists’ works.

THE 2010 JURORS
The jurors for the Great Rivers Biennial 2010 are Douglas Fogle, Chief Curator and Deputy Director of Exhibitions and Public Programs at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Melissa Franklin, Director of the Pew Fellowship in the Arts, Philadelphia; and Laura Steward, Phillips Director of SITE Santa Fe, New Mexico. Jurors will review all submissions that meet the eligibility requirements and will select up to three artists meeting the Great River Biennial’s criteria. The Great Rivers Biennial winners will produce new work for an April 2010 exhibition that occupies the entirety of the Contemporary’s Main Galleries.

Past winners include Juan William Chávez, Jill Downen, Corey Escoto, Adam Frelin, Kim Humphries, Moses, Michelle Oosterbaan, Matthew Strauss, and Jason Wallace Triefenbach. The distinguished jurors for the past Great Rivers Biennial include Cheryl Brutvan, Curator of Contemporary Art Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Lisa Corrin, Director, Williams College Museum of Art, Elizabeth Dunbar, Curator at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City; Gary Garrels, Chief Curator and Deputy Director of Exhibitions and Public Programs at the UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson, Director and Chief Curator of the Aspen Art Museum in Colorado; Helen Molesworth, Curator of Contemporary Art at the Harvard University Art Museums; Debra Singer, Executive Director and Chief Curator, The Kitchen; Lilian Tone, Assistant Curator of the Department of Painting and Sculpture at The Museum of Modern Art, New York; and Hamza Walker, Education Director, Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago.