Compete Lost Art: A Call for Works By or About Legacy Creative Processes
Opportunity Description
International Deadline: July 27, 2025 – The Cincinnati based non-profit arts organization and gallery, Manifest, invites visual artists and designers to submit works made about or using skills and materials the world may have moved on from, but still contain depth of potential, and unappreciated value.
A lost art is a skill or process that has fallen out of use: wet-plate colloidal photography, punch-card coding, cursive writing. As technologies develop, old ways of doing things fall out of memory in favor of what is newer, more fashionable, faster, or cheaper. The world moves on, leaving behind the detritus of tools and machines made to complete work that is no longer done. The knowledge of how to process film, how to weave, to mix egg-tempera paint, takes on a sacred, rarified, or even provincial quality.
Where does the knowledge go when the industrial, technologically-advanced world thinks it doesn’t need it anymore? How has being forgotten freed it? Who are the stewards of these lost arts?
LOST ARTS is a call for work made about or using skills and materials the world may have moved on from, but still contain depth of potential, and unappreciated value.
On display November 7 – December 5, 2025.
ELIGIBILITY
LOST ARTS is open to everyone internationally. The only limitation is that entries must represent original works which address the broad theme described above. Open to all traditional and non-traditional genre and media.
HONORARIA
Each participating exhibitor will receive a $50 honorarium. The honorarium has no strings attached (other than full participation in the relevant exhibit). It is a modest thank-you for collaborating with us as we chart our future.
$9,000.00 GRAND JURY AWARD
Since Manifest’s 13th season the annual Grand Jury Award has recognized one exhibited work each year with a significant jury-determined cash prize of, representing the ‘best of the best’ shown in Manifest’s many exhibits that year.
The Grand Jury Award also awards $1,000 to one work during each of our nine exhibition periods. This expands our support from one to up to nine artists each year, and allocates 80% more funding to recognize the merits of exhibited works… see more.
JURY & CURATOR
This exhibit will be juried by an anonymous several member panel of professional and academic advisors with a broad range of expertise relative to art and design. The jury will then pass along their recommendations to the exhibit curator who will make the final selections from the jury-approved pool.
PUBLICATION
Manifest Press will produce a high quality hard-cover publication documenting each entire season of exhibits, artists, and works shown. This continues Manifest’s commitment to long-term documentation and dissemination of our projects, and the expansion of physical exhibits into a broader geography and time frame, while also bringing all exhibits together under one cover each year to create a better product which will be more valuable to the public, teachers, libraries, and exhibiting artists.
ENTRY FEE
$45 for up to three entries submitted. $5 per each additional entry.
APPLY ONLINE
Visit Manifest Gallery online to Apply.
SALES
Artworks are not required to be for sale in order to be included in our exhibitions. All work, unless indicated as not for sale (NFS), will be available for sale during exhibit. Manifest Gallery will retain a commission of 30% of the sale price on artwork sold during the exhibition.
INSURANCE
Works will be insured while on gallery premises. Insurance covers theft, vandalism, damage caused by gallery patrons or staff.
Visit Manifest Gallery online for complete details and to Apply.
About:
Manifest Creative Research Gallery and Drawing Center is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization located in East Walnut Hills in Cincinnati, Ohio. We serve as a venue for the display and experience of insightful, thought provoking art and design, and functions as a hub for creative research and innovation at all levels of artistic endeavor.
Manifest Gallery
2727 Woodburn Avenue
East Walnut Hills
Cincinnati, Ohio 45206
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