Annual Juried Student Art Exhibition

Due to university policy regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, the UNI Gallery of Art will present this exhibition online only.

Co-sponsored by the Friends of the UNI Permanent Art Collection & Gallery. The exhibition poster was designed by UNI graphic design student Craig Miller.

This competitive exhibition showcases outstanding recent artworks by students enrolled in classes in the UNI Department of Art. The juror for this year's competition is Jared Ledesma, Assistant Curator at the Des Moines Art Center. Mr. Ledesma will make a selection from approximately 150 student entries and choose a number of merit awards and honorable mentions. He will also give a lecture about his career as well as his perspective on jurying at 6 p.m., Wednesday, March 11 in KAB 111.

Mr. Ledesma has a B.A. and an M.A. in art history from San Francisco State University. Prior to his appointment at the Des Moines Art Center (DMAC), he worked in the painting and sculpture curatorial department at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. His first major exhibition for DMAC was Queer Abstraction, which opened in June of 2019 and included newly commissioned artworks by Elijah Burgher and Mark Joshua Epstein as well as a new edition of artist Tom Burr’s large-scale sculpture Deep Purple, a reimagining of Richard Serra’s controversial Tilted Arc. He has also organized numerous permanent collection-based exhibitions such as I, too, am America, The Irrational and the Marvelous, and Sultry Night: Selected Works by Grant Wood.