The Woodmere Annual: 83rd Juried Exhibition

The Woodmere Annual exhibition presents the work of Philadelphia’s contemporary artists. Each year, a different juror prepares a call for artists, soliciting submissions related to a distinct theme or idea. This year’s juror, Ron Tarver, invites makers to submit works that reflect on the theme of Family.

**Artwork submission will open soon. Please follow us on social media (@woodmereart) for the latest updates, or visit this website page for more information.

Call to Artists

Family can be an inheritance, a chosen community, a structure of care, a site of rupture, or even a collection of salient objects. Definitions of family may be intimate or expansive, encompassing close personal bonds and broader conceptions of collective family across time and place.

For Woodmere's 83rd Annual Juried Exhibition, presented in dialogue with the exhibition Arc of Promise celebrating the USA's 250th anniversary, the juror invites artists to submit works that engage the theme of family. How do families shape individual and collective identities, including national ones? How can ideas of kinship, responsibility, and belonging contribute to nation-building?

Artists working in all media are encouraged to apply. As part of the submission process, applicants will be asked to share a word or brief statement describing what "family" means to them, which may be incorporated into the exhibition.

About the Juror

Ron Tarver has spent nearly 50 years creating photo essays on subjects from double-Dutch jump rope to the 1980s crack epidemic, Black architecture, veterans, and cowboys. His recent work appropriates his father's midcentury photographs to address today's racial climate.

Tarver holds a BA from Northeastern State University and an MFA from the University of the Arts. His honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, Pew Fellowship, two Independence Foundation Fellowships, and NEA funding. As a Philadelphia Inquirer staff photojournalist for 32 years, Tarver shared the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for documenting school violence and received three additional Pulitzer nominations, plus awards from World Press Photos, Society of Professional Journalists, and National Press Photographers Association.

His work has appeared in National Geographic, Life, Time, and other major publications. He co-authored We Were There: Voices of African American Veterans (Harper Collins, 2004) and The Long Ride Home: Black Cowboys in America, which debuted as Amazon's number one release in 2024.

Tarver's photographs have been featured in over 30 solo and 50 group exhibitions nationally and internationally, and are held in collections including Woodmere, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Philadelphia Art Museum, and The Studio Museum in Harlem. He is a professor at Swarthmore College and is represented by Robin Rice Gallery.