Compete Numbers: A Call for Works About, By, or Featuring Numbers
Opportunity Description
International Deadline: October 11, 2025 – The Cincinnati based non-profit arts organization and gallery, Manifest, invites visual artists and designers to submit works that engages with the universal language—numbers as both measurement and metaphor, structure and symbol. Submissions may address the visual or conceptual presence of numbers, their cultural weight, or the ways they organize, constrain, or expand our sense of reality.
We live by numbers. We count the days until a child is born, and the days since. We mark time in birthdays, anniversaries, and retirements. We measure progress in grades, salaries, “likes,” years on the job, and steps taken or miles run. Numbers shape how we understand ourselves and the world—our distance traveled, our age, our debts, our hopes.
Numbers are also a language. They describe not only what is tangible but also what lies beyond immediate observation—weather patterns, the speed of light, the pull of gravity, the scale of galaxies. Like letters and type, they carry formal beauty in their shapes and arrangements. Writing the notation for a perfect sphere is so much simpler than drawing one, and yet both actions “mean” the same concept.
Calculations and measurements may be factual, but they are not neutral. What and how we measure, and for what purposes, is a matter personal, cultural, maybe poetic. Numbers can be symbols, patterns, rhythms, and aesthetic forms in their own right. They promise precision, but also invite interpretation.
This exhibition asks: how do numbers shape our experience of time, value, and truth? How do they appear as aesthetic forces—as forms, signs, and languages—within works of art?
On display January 23 – February 20, 2026.
ELIGIBILITY
NUMBERS 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. However, we realize it may also be helpful as practical support for shipping, framing, delivery, or travel to attend the Manifest exhibit reception events.*
$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
