March 2011

Progress Energy Center for the Performing Arts in Raleigh, NC, Offers Annual Exhibit Featuring NC Artists

The Raleigh Fine Arts Society is proud to host its 34th North Carolina Artists Exhibition, on view from Mar. 4 through May 2, 2012. This juried exhibition for multimedia visual art features established and emerging artists from more than 60 counties across North Carolina. The exhibit will be on view in the Betty Ray McCain Gallery at the Progress Energy Center for the Performing Arts in Raleigh, NC. An awards reception will begin at 2pm on Mar. 4, with a juror’s lecture offered in Meymandi Hall at the Progress Energy Center for the Performing Arts.

This year’s juror is Mark Sloan, Director and Senior Curator of the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art at the College of Charleston, School of the Arts in Charleston, SC. In his twenty-seven year career he has organized hundreds of exhibitions, ranging from contemporary Japanese installation art to 19th Century Baluchi tribal weavings. Several of his exhibitions have traveled to institutions such as the High Museum in Atlanta, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, the New Orleans Museum of Art, and others. Sloan will be viewing 584 works submitted by 309 artists. He will select approximately 65 for the show.

Event sponsors are John William Pope Foundation, Smith, Anderson, Blount, Dorsett, Mitchell & Jernigan, LLP and Mary Duke Biddle Foundation.
In 1978-79, the Raleigh Fine Arts Society sponsored its first juried show for multimedia art created by Wake County artists. This exhibition expanded over the years and now attracts artists from all over the state. Thousands of spectators who come to the Progress Energy Center for the Performing Arts enjoy having this opportunity to view and purchase artwork created by North Carolina artists.

The Raleigh Fine Arts Society had its beginning in 1964 when a small number of volunteers staged an exhibition of local art at the Olivia Raney Library in Raleigh. The following year the Raleigh Fine Arts Society, Inc. was formed. The role today of The Raleigh Fine Arts Society remains as it was in 1965: To encourage the pursuit of art, music and the written word. That means identifying, supporting and recognizing creative people and helping assure their work is seen, heard and appreciated. This organization has established and nurtured the essential links among those who support these pursuits, those who enjoy them and those whose hands, hearts and minds create them.

Since the 1970’s, The Raleigh Fine Arts Society has been actively involved in a variety of projects that support the arts. In addition to the art exhibition, other projects include an annual Choral Celebration for elementary schools in Wake County and an annual Literary Contest, open to short story writers from every high school in Wake County, public or private.

For further information check our NC Institutional Gallery listings, call 919/787-7480, ext. 1064 or visit (www.raleighfinearts.org).

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