Compete Furniture: A Call for Works About Extensions of Architecture
Opportunity Description
International Deadline: July 26, 2025 – The Cincinnati based non-profit arts organization and gallery, Manifest, invites visual artists and designers to submit works about the objects that make a space suitable for living—about its use, its design, its crafting, or about the events and work in our lives that happen around it.
A room is characterized by the furniture and fixtures inside of it. Fixtures tell you where you are. If you see a sink and refrigerator, know you are in the kitchen; a large formal table places you in a dining room. Crown that table with a chandelier and you are in a nice dining room.
Furniture’s aesthetic communicates as much as it functions—an industrial stainless-steel kitchen is easier to keep clean, and its smooth planes and sharp edges communicate exemplary spotlessness. Beds, chairs, and dressers become sites navigated to and around daily as we eat, cook, clean ourselves, organize, work, and rest.
Furniture’s construction is an art, its design a science. It is passed down, bought new, found in antique malls, repaired, refinished. It signifies class, purpose, and it changes features and make-up to suit a type of work done with it.
On display November 7 – December 5, 2025.
ELIGIBILITY
FURNITURE 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
