More than 1,000 artists from 24 countries and 44 states are now registered to compete in ArtPrize, an unprecedented competition that will award, based on a public vote, nearly one-half million to prize winners, including $250,000 to the first-place artist.
ArtPrize will take over a three-mile district throughout downtown Grand Rapids, Mich. transforming it into an art exhibit space from Sept. 23 through Oct. 10. ArtPrize has no curator or jury. Artists were invited to show their work online to venues in the city and the matching between artists and venues was left entirely up to them. The winners will be chosen by public vote through mobile devices or the web beginning Sept. 23.
ArtPrize has leveraged its social networking presence on sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube to draw interest from thousands of artists from around the world. ArtPrize.org is now averaging about 90,000 page views each day and the Facebook page has more than 5,200 fans.
The deadline for registered artists to match with one of the city’s venues, which includes the city’s bridges, parks, buildings and many pedestrian areas, is at midnight EDT on Saturday, Aug. 15. For more information about ArtPrize, go to artprize.org.