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NCAA awards highlight athlete and art competition

The third annual “Commitment to Excellence in Art and Sport: A Fine Art Competition” is open for submissions until midnight ET May 1.

The competition, which includes two $2,500 awards underwritten by the NCAA, is open to artists who create fine art (with sport as the primary subject) in the following categories: Painting/2D, Sculpture/3D and Photography. The original deadline for entries was Jan. 15, but it was moved to May 1 to aid those affected by Superstorm Sandy.

The art must depict or evoke sports, celebrating athletics or the athlete as a subject. The focus may be individual or team, competitive or recreational (participant or spectator-remembered) or studied still life (figurative or landscape).

Up to 30 pieces will be selected by the jurors for exhibit at a venue to be announced. The exhibit will open in fall 2013.

This year’s jurors include Bruce Helander, Everett Raymond Kinstler and Marc Mellon. Helander is an artist, former athlete, art critic, curator and editor-in-chief of the Art Economist. Kinstler is one of the nation’s foremost portrait painters. His portraits have included seven presidents, 60 cabinet officers and numerous movie stars and sport figures. Mellon is one of America’s premier figurative sculptors in bronze with works installed around the world, including Tokyo, the NCAA national office and the Vatican.

Three $2,500 prizes will be awarded.

Two $2,500 awards will be given by the NCAA in “Honoring College Athletics and Academic Excellence” − one in painting/2D and one in sculpture/3D. To qualify, the art must depict collegiate athletes or teams, past or present, on or off the field of play, in a sport in which the NCAA conducts championship competition: baseball, basketball, bowling, cross country, fencing, field hockey, football, golf, gymnastics, ice hockey, lacrosse, rifle, rowing, skiing, soccer, softball, swimming and diving, tennis, track and field, volleyball, water polo, and wrestling.

Since the mission of the NCAA is to integrate academics and athletics into higher education, these works should illuminate the attributes of learning, balance, character, spirit, community and/or fair play. They also should support diversity, gender equity, nondiscrimination, physical fitness and/or healthy behaviors.

When considering possible subjects, artists are reminded that NCAA member schools range in size from more than 50,000 to fewer than a thousand students. Since all share in these same aspirations, artists are encouraged to think broadly across the spectrum when making subject-matter choices. 

Student-athletes may collect any award from this competition.

In addition to the NCAA awards, the $2,500 Germain G. Glidden Best in Show Award will be given in memory of the National Art Museum of Sport founder, who was a portrait artist and national champion squash player. The award is given by his daughter, Christine D. Glidden, chair of the competition.

Except for entries in photography (which may be digital photography and manipulated), work must be produced by the “hand of the artist” – no computer art. An artist may enter up to five pieces in each category.

To enter the competition, click here and then click on the red enter now box.