Announcing the New Glasstire Art Writing Prize!

by Glasstire May 2, 2018

(Editor’s note, Aug. 14, 2018: This is the original announcement. More details on the prize and how to apply will be announced in the next two days. Stay tuned!)

Update: August 16, 2018: go here to submit to to the 2018 Glasstire Art Writing Prize. The submission deadline is September 30, 2018.

Glasstire’s Board of Directors and staff are pleased to announce the new Glasstire Art Writing Prize, a competitive award designed to highlight emerging arts writers in Texas.

The Glasstire Art Writing Prize will be awarded annually to a senior undergraduate or graduate student at a Texas university. For the inaugural year, students from art history, journalism, studio arts and literature departments at participating universities in the Dallas/Fort Worth area will be invited to submit via an open call for articles, starting in September 2018. 

Judges for our 2018 prize include Augustín Arteaga, The Eugene McDermott Director of the Dallas Museum of Art; Anne Bothwell, Vice President of Arts for KERA; Rainey Knudson, the founder and publisher of Glasstire; Christina Rees, the Editor-in-Chief of Glasstire; and Brandon Zech, the News Editor of Glasstire.

“As the oldest online art magazine in the country, Glasstire has long been involved in giving writers some of their first opportunities to publish professionally,” says Glasstire founder Rainey Knudson. “With this new prize, we will be able to go even further in identifiying and nurturing the next generation of talented writers, and expand the conversation about art in Texas.”

The winner will be awarded a $2,500 prize and their work will be published on Glasstire. In addition, they will be honored at a cocktail party on November 7, 2018 in Dallas.

UPDATE 8/25/18: Students currently enrolled as undergraduates in any university within 60 miles of Fort Worth or Dallas are eligible to apply. Go here to submit to to the 2018 Glasstire Art Writing Prize. The submission deadline is September 30, 2018.

 

 

14 comments

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14 comments

howard klion May 3, 2018 - 09:08

What about community colleges?

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Rainey Knudson May 5, 2018 - 07:39

Hi there, we gave this a lot of thought and decided to only open it to schools with graduate programs, for a number of reasons (the main one being our capacity to manage the process this first time around). But this is something we’re committed to doing in coming years. We hope it will grow, and the model will almost certainly evolve.

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Iva May 4, 2018 - 18:04

It’s a new prize, so assume they haven’t totally worked out the specifics. If you think you’d like to write, go for it.

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Michael Corris May 6, 2018 - 13:14

I’d hold off until all participants are guaranteed some kind of substantive feedback on their efforts. Otherwise it’s just art writers competing against art writers blindly with no payoff.

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Rainey Knudson May 6, 2018 - 16:06

Respectfully disagree: there *is* a payoff for the winner. And it’s not the job of a prize to educate people.

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X,Y,Z May 7, 2018 - 00:42

“Substantial feedback” is the only thing worth winning.

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Michael Corris May 7, 2018 - 18:25

What is the job of a prize? It could be many things: to reward excellence, to validate existing cultural conventions, to “train” individuals how to do the right thing, or to bring a kind of elevated self-regard to an institution. Perhaps it is a helpful boost up the ladder of success . . . in which case, let’s hope the morning after is not a big hangover.

Ad Reinhardt — an artist I never tire of quoting — once returned a check he was given as a prize by a Chicago museum. His friend Abe Ajay ribbed him mercilessly just because he had initially accepted the money. But true to his principles, Reinhardt eventually returned the cash. Why? Because Reinhardt thought that it was unseemly for artists to be placed in the position of competing among themselves for some scrap of notoriety and a rather impoverished pay day.

Now, prizes proliferate. They are the stuff of modern marketing. And the sums just keep getting larger . . .

To accept a prize is to tacitly agree to the hierarchy constituted by the prize. You can’t take the money and say “but I don’t agree with competitions or the whole idea of a panel of judges passing judgment, negotiating, horse-trading, or worse.”

The job of a prize is what you want it to be. The measure of an institution is how far it is willing to break the mold. My advice to young writers is to keep on writing, seek out relationships with established writers on art who you admire, and seek out peers who write on art, too. Manage your own circle of learning and sharing and steer clear of prizes.

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Michael Corris May 7, 2018 - 18:29

One more thing, Rainey: here’s a though about another way to spend that prize money:
why not dole it out to the same critics selected as judges, with the charge to use it to hold a social gathering of young art writers in a congenial setting with appropriate refreshment. Ask the writers to bring a piece of writing, so they can read it to the group and get some feedback. A few hundred dollars can purchase a good deal of appropriate refreshment, by the way. But don’t think of it as do-gooding . . . think of it as an introduction for young writers into the club of published art critics.

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Chad Dawkins May 8, 2018 - 09:49

Here’s my 2 cents:
I’m with Corris. As a winner, almost winner, and reject many times over, I think some professional conviviality and constructive feedback is worth way more than one prize. Pick an academic with tight writing, give them 2500 for rent and unpaid AT&T bills, publish their piece and that’s it? Maybe they could use the money to move to Indiana for that tenure-track job.
You could really do a thing here. This could be an opportunity to bring in a whole group of potential writers, talk about writing, churn the pot. We really need to foster and encourage those willing to critically engaging with art around here–locally and statewide.

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Michael Corris May 8, 2018 - 18:13

Chad, thanks for the thoughtful reply. Let’s see if we can follow up on this . . . I’m not difficult to find!

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Voltaire Paredes August 15, 2018 - 14:38

I’m a Houston artist with a BFA and currently working on an MBA at UHD. Would I qualify as a candidate for this prize? If so, where do we find more information about deadlines and steps for submition?

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Brandon Zech August 16, 2018 - 11:10

Hi Voltaire,

This first iteration of the prize will only be open to North Texas-area students. However, as the prize becomes more established and grows, we expect to expand it to cover other regions as well. More on the call for entry here: https://glasstire.com/2018/08/16/open-call-for-the-2018-glasstire-art-writing-prize/

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Utopia Weiner August 25, 2018 - 00:29

Um.
Deflated and Deflowered.
Lots of chewing of lip and disapproval
here.

Why the tight boundaries! Free the horses
and open the corral! Why not let Everyone
Enter and apply! The young, the old, the demented, in school, kicked outta school,
the prissies, the kiss assies- Everyone!

Ya never know what new art star writer
is out there. Why narrow the field to
academics and their chore boys? Like
an art collector that will only scratch
and sniff at grad art studios…

Who cares if you get 450 entries all
beginning with,”You suck! They suck!
Only my art is rad!”

You would also have gotten my tobacco
plug; wet, grimy, wasted, sinewy and full
of the cunning and despair of someone
who thinks, reads, researches, dreams
about (mostly) contemporary art.

But I go to Brookhaven College Of The Arts in Dallas (really Farmers Branch), Texas.
So I can’t enter.

A shame really. I would have blistered
your carpet.

I’ll keep writing, and discussing
contemporary art, art theory, art practice
with my peers, professors, and artists local and visiting. I get out to shows and I’ve been meaning to blog about what I am
seeing and not seeing…

Maybe I’ll send you guys a few, like on
the down low, nuthing Official of course,
but something more Real…like when
the sun is baking hot and you’re eating
a street taco with no napkin. Something
a little more (Art) dirty.

Best of luck to all who enter the art
writing competition!

Regards,
Utopia

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Rainey Knudson August 25, 2018 - 09:15

Utopia: the prize is open to any currently enrolled student at a university or college within 60 miles of Fort Worth or Dallas! This was an older announcement which just listed universities we’d initially been in touch with about the prize.

We’re still figuring this out; please be patient with us. We’ll be expanding the prize next year. Sorry for any confusion. We hope you send in your tobacco plug.

To submit: https://glasstire.com/2018/08/16/open-call-for-the-2018-glasstire-art-writing-prize/

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