On Sept. 7 the Department of Art and Art History will open the first annual Nebraska National Collegiate Juried Art Exhibition in the Eisentrager-Howard Gallery. The gallery is located on the first floor of Richards Hall, located just south of Memorial Stadium on the University of Nebraska–Lincoln city campus.

The Nebraska National will be open from Sept. 7-28 and will showcase the best undergraduate artwork from students around the U.S. and Canada. 186 students from 37 states and 2 provinces submitted 495 pieces this first year. Jurors selected 132 pieces from 97 artists for the exhibition, including 26 pieces in ceramics, 51 pieces in photography and 55 pieces in printmaking.

“We got an excellent response for the first year of the competition. There is a wide variety of interesting work,” said Department of Art and Art History Interim Chair Pete Pinnell.

The department intends to make this show an annual event. Each year’s exhibition will feature three different categories on a two-year rotating basis. This year’s categories are ceramics, printmaking and photography. Next year, the categories will be painting/drawing, sculpture and new genres.

Long-time department supporters Dan and Barbara Howard, of Lincoln, Neb., created the Howard Awards for Excellence for the first year of the competition. The awards are intended to both reward excellence and to attract students to enter the competition.

“The Howards very generously gave four awards; a $1,000 First Prize in each of the three categories and a $1,500 prize for Best of Show,” Pinnell said. “Dan and Barbara’s support has been instrumental to the success of this show and of the entire department."

Pinnell said the exhibition meets two important goals for the department.

“It will expose our students to the best student art work from across the country, and I hope it will also entice the general public to attend our openings and see what we’re doing here in the department," he said.

In addition to the gallery show, an online catalog for the exhibition will be available on the department’s website (http://www.unl.edu/art). Anyone will be able to download the catalog for free or send the file to a self-publishing site to get a paper copy printed.

“We’ve started work on the catalog and will have it on our website by mid-September," Pinnell said.

The Nebraska National will have a special First Friday opening on Sept. 7 from 6-8 p.m. The Howard Awards for Excellence will be announced at 7 p.m. The event is free and open to the public. Hours for the Eisentrager-Howard Gallery are Monday-Thursday, noon to 4 p.m.

Jurors for this year's exhibition were Sam Chung in ceramics, who is an Assistant Professor in the Herberger College of the Arts-School of Art at Arizona State University; Carol Panaro-Smith and James Hajicek in photography, who own Alchemy Studio, which produces fine arts photography and workshops in the arts; and David Morrison in printmaking, who is Professor of Printmaking at Herron School of Art and Design at Indiana University-Purdue University in Indianapolis. All four jurors will be in classes the first week of September.

Gallery hours are Monday-Thursday, noon to 4 p.m.

Additional Public Info: Free and open to the public. Gallery hours are Monday-Thursday, noon to 4 p.m.