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About

Young Arkansas Artists highlights the remarkable talent, creativity and perspective of Arkansas students.

Each year, art teachers and instructors throughout Arkansas submit their students’ work, and a panel of art professionals selects works to be included in the exhibition. The Young Arkansas Artists Exhibition showcases artwork from kindergarten through high school in a wide range of mediums and techniques – from crayon and pastel to collage and sculpture.

This year, the panel of art professionals selected 65 works from 402 entries submitted by 81 Arkansas schools to show in the exhibition. Guest juror Dr. Emily Jean Hood selected a Best in Class and two Honorable Mention awards for each grade, in addition to the recipients of the Mid-Southern Watercolorists Award for Achievement in Watercolor and Ray Smenner Award for Achievement in Painting. Members of the Arkansas Art Educators Association also selected one Teacher’s Choice award from each grade. Each winning artist’s school receives a monetary award to support its art program funded in part by Arkansas Children’s Hospital.

About the Juror

Emily Jean Hood, PhD, is an artist, teacher, and researcher currently serving as Assistant Professor and Coordinator of Art Education at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. She is an award-winning art educator with over fourteen years of experience in both K-12 and higher education. Currently the Coordinator-Elect of the Caucus of Social Theory in Art Education, a special interest group of the National Art Education Association, she is also a member of the Arkansas Art Educators. Her scholarship has been published in Studies in Art Education, the Art Education Journal, and the International Journal of Education through Art, among others.

About the Awards

Young Arkansas Artists Virtual Awards Ceremony

The Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts is proud to present an online version of the long-standing Young Arkansas Artists program and exhibition. Artists of the 61st Young Arkansas Artists Exhibition and their families and teachers gathered – virtually – on YouTube for an awards ceremony with remarks by AMFA Director of Community Engagement Chris Revelle, AMFA Community Engagement Manager Patricia Graves, and Juror Dr. Emily Hood.

Supporters

Awards are supported in part by:
Arkansas Children’s Hospital
Mid-Southern Watercolorists

Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts programs are supported in part by:
The Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts Foundation; the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts Board of Trustees; the City of Little Rock; the Little Rock Convention and Visitors Bureau; the City of North Little Rock; and the Arkansas Arts Council, an agency of the Arkansas Department of Parks, Heritage, and Tourism, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional general operating support is provided by the Alice L. Walton Foundation; The Brown Foundation, Inc.; and Bank of America.

Special funding made possible by American Rescue Plan Act grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities; National Endowment for the Arts; Institute of Museum and Library Services; and Arkansas Arts Council, an agency of the Arkansas Department of Parks, Heritage, and Tourism, and the National Endowment for the Arts.