The Phillips Collection

America’s first museum of modern art, The Phillips Collection, opened in 1921.  As part of the museum’s 100th anniversary celebration the museum conducted an art call that went out to DC metro area artists. The title of the art call was Inside Outside, Upside Down. Artists were invited to submit works that reflected the struggle and resiliency of the human spirit during times of crisis.

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Leading up to the launch of the call for entries, the SubmitArts team worked extensively with museum staff to prepare the call for publication. The museum submitted the art call brief, and our team put everything together ahead of schedule to give the museum ample time to run through and approve of the submission process, all text, all required fields, and more. As SubmitArts offers a managed service, the museum’s only responsibility was to make sure that all of their requests were satisfied. The museum was not responsible for any technical aspects of the call.

The Inside Outside, Upside Down art call had a tight schedule with a two-week window for artists to submit their artwork for consideration.  Knowing that the museum planned to cap submissions at 1000 entries, there was a surge of submissions on the opening day Sunday, February 14th, 2021.  Beginning on the 14th and throughout the open submission period, the SubmitArts team handled the technical support for the artists and museum.

During the early stages of the art call a small percentage of artists encountered difficulty meeting the file size requirements for the required detail views for their submitted artwork.  The SubmitArts team diagnosed the issue and recommended that the museum alter their required size for those additional files. The museum adopted the recommendation which made for a smooth submission process for the subsequent artists.

Museum staff processed the submitted work prior to releasing it to the jury to ensure that all submissions met the criteria established by the art call. Approved submissions were passed on to a 4-person jury. Two voting rounds were conducted, and a final collaborative review panel identified 64 artists as the finalists whose work was on exhibit in the museum from July 17th – September 12th, 2021.

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In addition to running their Centennial Celebration art call through SubmitArts, the Phillips Museum benefitted from the use of two sister services of SubmitArts, the C4E directory and FolioLink, both of which are managed by Kodexio.  The Inside Outside, Upside Down art call was included in featured advertising and newsletter distribution for the popular art call directory service C4E found at callforentries.com, and the winning artists got published in a showcase site through FolioLink with a social voting feature.

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