Eligibility
Artists must be at least 18 years old and a resident of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, or West Virginia.
Jurors
Larry Wheeler
Larry Wheeler was the director of the North Carolina Museum of Art from 1994 until he retired in 2018. As director, Wheeler helped bring national recognition to the museum through his efforts to grow the museum’s collection and offer the people of North Carolina more, in his words, than “mute art” on the wall. Wheeler’s legacy includes the acquiring of 29 Auguste Rodin sculptures and the construction of the museum’s West Building, sculpture garden and reflecting pools. Roy Cooper, North Carolina’s governor, states, “North Carolinians of all walks of life have access to one of the most renowned art museums in the country thanks to Larry Wheeler’s visionary leadership.”
Stacey L. Kirby
Stacey Kirby is a queer, white-bodied, self-appointed civil servant from North Carolina who creates socially-engaged interactive performance art. Her work has been featured at Greensboro Project Space, 21c Museum Hotel, Ackland Art Museum at UNC-Chapel Hill, Gibbes Museum of Art, Appalachian State University, ArtPrize, Meredith College, the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, the Nasher Museum of Art and the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, Contemporary Art Museum of Raleigh, North Carolina Museum of Art, and the Mint Museum of Craft and Design. Kirby is a recipient of the ArtPrize 8 Juried Grand Prize, a NC Arts Council Artist Fellowship for Visual Artists and nominated for the United States Artist Award, Anonymous Was A Woman Award and a finalist for the 1858 Prize. She has been awarded artist residencies at the Headlands Center for the Arts (Sausalito, CA), Barton College (NC), the Atlantic Center for the Arts (New Smyrna Beach, FL) the Gibbes Museum of Art (Charleston, SC) as well as a visiting artist at UNC Wilmington. Her work is represented in the Ackland Art Museum at the UNC-Chapel Hill, Duke University Rare Book Collection and other private collections. Kirby has a dual degree from the UNC-Chapel Hill in Studio Art and Journalism and Mass Communications.
Antoine Williams
Antoine Williams is an interdisciplinary artist who is heavily influenced by speculative fiction, critical Black studies and his working-class upbringing in Red Springs, North Carolina. Antoine received his BFA from the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, and his MFA from UNC Chapel Hill. He is a recipient of the 2017 Joan Mitchell Award for Painters and Sculptors, 2018 Harpo Foundation Grant Award, and the 2022 National Academy of Art Abbey Mural Prize. His work is in the permanent collection of the Nasher Museum of Art and the North Carolina Museum of Art; exhibits include Smack Mellon Brooklyn, Columbia Museum of Art, 21c Museum, Elsewhere Museum, Prizm Art Fair, The McColl Center of Art and Innovation, and the California Museum of Photography. His residencies include The Center for Afrofuturist Studies, The Hambidge Center, and the Joan Mitchel Residency in New Orleans. Williams was also a part of the 2021 Drawing Center viewing program and is an assistant professor of Drawing in the Expanded Field at the University of Florida.