2021 New Jersey Arts Annual: ReVision and Respond

ReVision and Respond

The 45 artists presented here respond to the turbulent events of recent years, especially 2020. They created 50 works that interpret current and possible worlds. We chose them from over 1,800 submissions by 485 New Jersey artists. Using various materials and techniques, the selected artists transformed their personal experiences and vision into photographs, paintings, sculpture, textiles, and other artworks.

How did the pandemic, economic distress, and reckoning with racial injustice influence the artists? What emotions and perspectives do they express? How are they similar to or different from your personal experiences? We hope that these creative voices speak to you and offer a way to process the intense events of our current world.

-Amy Simon Hopwood and Kristen J. Owens, Jurors

Emoji Activity

We want to know how the works in the exhibition make you feel. Click here to learn more about the art and respond to our emoji activity.

Exhibition Views and Featured Artworks

New Jersey Arts Annual

The New Jersey Arts Annual is a unique series of exhibitions highlighting the State’s visual and performing artists. It is open to any artist currently living or working in New Jersey. In partnership with major museums around the state, one exhibition takes place each year, alternating between host institutions.

2021 New Jersey Arts Annual: ReVision and Respond is a project of the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and The Newark Museum of Art.

Jurors

Kristen J. Owens is the Associate Curator (Programs) for Rutgers University-Newark’s Paul Robeson Galleries at Express Newark with a background as an arts administrator and archivist as well as interests in visual culture, fashion, and African American studies. She has co-created exhibitions including Performing Fashion: New York City at NYU’s 80WSE Gallery (2017) and Dressed at Rutgers University-Newark’s Paul Robeson Galleries (2018). She has presented papers on African American photography and conduct literature, such as etiquette manuals, at conferences including Fashioning the Black Body in Bondage and Freedom (Brooklyn, 2017) and the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association National Conference (San Diego, 2017). Owens holds an MA in visual culture: costume studies and an MS in library and information science from New York University’s dual degree program with LIU Palmer. She holds a BA in fashion studies from Montclair State University.

Amy Simon Hopwood is The Newark Museum of Art’s Associate Curator of Decorative Arts. She has developed exhibitions including Unexpected Color: A Journey Through Glass and Four Quiltmakers, Four American Stories. As Curator of Costumes and Textiles at the San Diego Historical Society, she curated the 1996 exhibition and catalog, From Bustles to Bikinis: A Century of Changing Beach Fashions. She holds a BA in Fine Arts from Amherst College and a MA from the Winterthur Program in Early American Culture at the University of Delaware.

Learn about the artists in this exhibition