Urban Arts Space is seeking projects for 2025–2026 to showcase at our downtown Columbus gallery at 50 W Town Street, Hopkins Hall Gallery on Ohio State campus, or UAS Online. Projects could include gallery exhibitions, performances, audience participatory work, discussions, research demos, and more.
Time frames we're looking to fill for our physical venues:
Urban Arts Space: May–November 2025; May–November 2026
Hopkins Hall Gallery: August–December 2025; August–December 2026
A few considerations that will make for a stronger proposal:
- For exhibitions, we're looking for shows running five weeks or longer. This reduces the strain on our staff when switching out shows and allows us to create a more robust promotions plan.
- We’re especially interested in projects with community programming components, such as artist talks, panels, workshops, and collaborations with community partners and nonprofits.
- Projects should address Urban Arts Space’s mission of challenging perceptions, deepening learning, and increasing access to the arts.
- While solo proposals will be considered, applicants are encouraged to collaborate and emphasize ideas that foster conversations representing diverse perspectives.
- Artists must have ties to Ohio, whether they are artists who live and work in Ohio, students (undergraduate or graduate) attending university in Ohio, alumni of Ohio State, or curators based in Ohio bringing in outside artists on a national or international scale.
Review Rubric
We strive to be transparent with our review process. With that in mind, these are the criteria the committee uses to evaluate proposals:
- Quality and clarity of work and materials
- Experimentation with how art is imagined, made, viewed, or understood
- Breadth of community impact—programming component(s) that foster conversations and represent diverse perspectives
- Alignment with Urban Arts Space's mission to challenge perceptions, deepen learning, and increase access to the arts
Application Deadline: Sunday, November 10, 2024 at 5:00 PM ET.
Join us for a virtual info session about exhibition proposals on October 18, 2024 at 12:00 PM! Register at https://uas.osu.edu/events/project-proposal-virtual-info-session.
Proposals will be reviewed by an outside committee of community-based members and representatives from The Ohio State University. We hope to send out decisions in late December or early January.
If you have any questions, contact Merijn van der Heijden, Director of Urban Arts Space, at vanderheijden.1@osu.edu.