For our second biennial event, artists are invited to respond to our curatorial theme, "To Welcome the Stranger". Three cash prizes will be distributed to the top scoring first, second, and third place submissions.
Awards and notification will take place at ish Festival at approximately 12:30PM.

Jury contest submissions are now closed.

Meet the Jury!

Abby Schwartz has served as director of the Skirball Museum on the historic Cincinnati campus of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion since 2013. She is the former curator of education at the Taft Museum of Art, and a former Taft Museum of Art docent. She has lectured widely on Jewish art, notably at the Melton School and the Osher Life Long Learning Institute of the University of Cincinnati. While at the Taft, she co-curated an exhibition of Jewish and Christian devotional objects with the Skirball Museum and served as general editor for the publication Artistic Expressions of Faith in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, first place winner of the 1998 Ohio Museums Association Visual Communications Award in the book/catalogue category. Abby is the acting Board Chair for ish Festival.

Mike Boberg joined The Jewish Foundation team as its Director of Impact Assessment 4 years ago. Prior to joining the Foundation, he spent 15 years strengthening the local arts community in a variety of roles at ArtsWave, including managing its BOARDway Bound leadership initiative. His role at the Foundation includes working directly with all of the Foundation’s grant partners on establishing their learning and evaluation processes, as well as managing a portion of the Foundation’s grants portfolio, from request inception through the final reporting phase of the grant making process. In his free time, Mike is the Board Chair for Commonwealth Artists Student Theatre (CAST), a nonprofit high school theatre program based in Northern Kentucky that draws students from across the region to mount high quality productions each summer. He lives in Anderson Township with his husband, Ronny Watson.

Calcagno (Cal) Cullen is a social practice artist, arts educator, and curator. She is founder and Executive Director of Wave Pool Arts Center, a gallery, studio space, and socially-engaged arts activator in Cincinnati, United States, and the co-founder of The Welcome Project, a social-enterprise and makerspace for and by Cincinnati’s refugees and immigrants. She has previously worked in the education department of SFMOMA, the Community School of Music and Arts in Mountain View, California and was the Director of Adobe Books Backroom Gallery in San Francisco,. She is a member of the women’s art collective The FemFour, and collaboratively organizes the traveling exhibition and catalog of Women’s March posters entitled ‘Still They Persist.’ Her personal mission is to “create empathy and social change through contemporary art”.

Rabbi Matthew L. Berkowitz is the Director of Israel Programs for The Jewish Theological Seminary of America and co-founder of Kol Ha-Ot, a Jerusalem-based venture devoted to exploring the arts and Jewish learning. He was ordained from JTS in 1999, is a Wexner Graduate Fellow alumnus and most recently an alumnus of the Hartman Rabbinic Leadership Institute, Class V. An accomplished artist, Matt was formally trained in Jewish scribal art in Jerusalem and completed the writing of Megillat Esther, the illumination of several ketubbot, and a limited edition artist portfolio entitled Passover Landscapes: Illuminations on the Exodus which was acquired by Yale University, exhibited at Yeshiva University Museum (April, 2006) and is on permanent exhibit at The Jewish Theological Seminary.

She’s a mural makin’, street paintin’ quilt sewin’, yarnbombin’, curatin’, flashmobin’, tutu wearin’ rootin’ tootin’ art monster. With Pam Kravetz, Contemporary Art is not a spectator sport – it is understandable, accessible, interactive and community oriented. Truly, she is inspired by the beauty in the chaos of the everyday. Her artwork ranges from street art, Artworks installations at Cincinnati’s Children’s Hospital to monumental Memory Quilts in the lobby of the Contemporary Arts center. Wherever something new, interesting, sexy & fun is happening – chances are, Pam had something to do with it. She is currently the Artist in Residence at the Cincinnati Art Museum with her installation Ace Ramone, Mr. Doodle-Boy, The Peanut and You! A Cincinnatian true and through. Ms. Kravetz lives in Cincinnati with her husband Craig and dog Lenny Kravetz. Her son Max and step-daughters Erin and Jill live a bit away, but always near in her heart.