Art historian, curator Briggs to serve as 2024 Texas National juror

Stephen F. Austin State University School of Art will host the annual Texas National Competition and Exhibition April 12 through June 30 at The Cole Art Center @ The Old Opera House in downtown Nacogdoches.

The School of Art’s annual juried competition and exhibition attracts entrants from across the United States, providing artists an opportunity to have their work juried by highly acclaimed curators, artists and critics, such as this year’s juror, Peter S. Briggs, noted art historian, researcher and curator.

A reception at 5:30 p.m. Friday, April 12, will open the show. Prizes will be awarded for first, second and third places and best in show at the juror’s discretion. Prior to the reception, a juror’s talk begins at 5 p.m.

“Out of 561 entries, Briggs chose 65 works by 65 artists to be on display at The Cole Art Center for Texas National 2024,” said Weelynd McMullan, exhibition coordinator for The Cole Art Center. “He has chosen a great variety of strong 2D and 3D work, which will lead to a beautiful exhibition showcasing an assortment of different mediums for our students and community to enjoy.”

Briggs earned a doctorate in art history from the University of New Mexico and has curated more than 140 art exhibitions and published more than 95 articles, books and exhibition catalogs primarily on 20th and 21st century American art. He currently lives in Tucson, Arizona, and is writing a book about Terry Allen’s graphic art. Briggs began his pursuit as a curator in Albuquerque at the University of New Mexico Art Museum and the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology. He retired as chief curator at the University of Arizona Museum of Art and then moved to Lubbock as the Helen Devitt Jones Curator of Art at the Museum of Texas Tech University. While at Texas Tech he transformed the art collection through the creation of the Artist Printmaker/Photographer Research Collection and expanded the museum’s holdings from some 3,000 artworks to over 25,000. In the university’s graduate program of Heritage and Museum Sciences he developed and taught curatorial methodology, and as a two-time Fulbright Senior Scholar at the Vilnius Academy of Art, Lithuania, and the Academy of Art and Design in Bratislava, Slovak Republic, he taught curatorial practices for studio artists. Briggs has received more than 30 research and program grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities; has been an Organization of American States (OAS) research fellow at the Museo del Hombre Panameño and the Museo Nacional of Costa Rica; and received fellowships and grants from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, American Alliance of Museums, Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation, Institute of Museum and Library Services, Lila Wallace Reader’s Digest Fund for Folk Culture and Tinker Foundation, among others.

The Cole Art Center is located at 329 E. Main St. For more information, call (936) 468-1131.