Exhibitions
EAST TENNESSEE REGIONAL STUDENT ART EXHIBITION 2025
Knoxville Museum of Art / 1050 World's Fair Park Dr. November 28, 2025 - January 11, 2026
Welcome to the 20th Annual East Tennessee Regional Student Art Exhibition, presented by the Knoxville Museum of Art. The ETRSAE showcases the strength and diversity of art education programs in East Tennessee, celebrates talented middle and high school students, and supports arts education. This annual exhibition provides the opportunity for students to participate in a juried exhibition and to have their artworks displayed in a professional art museum environment. We are so delighted by the quality of the artworks, the dedication of the teachers, and the commitment of the museum staff to establish a museum/school tradition for our community.
Public, private, and home schools in grades 6–12 in 32 East Tennessee counties are invited to submit up to 15 artworks per teacher. Categories for the competition include ceramic, drawing, video production, mixed media, painting, computer graphics, sculpture, digital or traditional photography, and printmaking. Each participating school is represented by one work of art.
The Best-in-Show winner receives a Purchase Award of $500, and the artwork becomes a permanent part of the collection of Mr. James Dodson, on loan to the Knoxville Museum of Art’s Education Collection. The Best-in-Middle School winner receives $250. The teacher of the student who is selected as this year’s Best-in-Show and Best in Middle School will receive a $100 Art Educator Award from the Knoxville Museum of Art. Each student in the exhibition receives a certificate of participation. The “Best” in each of the 10 categories receives a cash award and a museum family membership.
As part of the 20th Annual East Tennessee Regional Student Art Exhibition, we will have a special exhibition of the Best in Show works from past exhibitions from Jim Dodson’s personal collection.
image: Best in Show, Lilly Deal, 11th Grade, Locrimoso, Painting - Acrylic Paint, Bearden High School, Victoria May, Art Teacher
The 20th Annual East Tennessee Regional Student Art Exhibition is presented by the Knoxville Museum of Art.
About Knoxville Museum of Art:
The Knoxville Museum of Art began its institutional life in 1961, establishing core values as a community-rooted organization that mined what art and culture could mean in East Tennessee. In the late 1980s, operations moved to a downtown location to serve a growing community. The modern-day KMA opened in 1990 in a 53,200 square-foot facility designed by architect Edward Larrabee Barnes. By the new millennium, the Museum’s collecting and programming mandate also advanced from an array of traveling blockbusters and local craft to focus on an archaeology of the fertile history of Appalachia and its evolving present. Our core exhibition project, Higher Ground: A Century of the Visual Arts in East Tennessee, was decades in the making, proposing a more inclusive historical narrative that entrenches the importance of stalwarts such as Lloyd Branson, Catherine Wiley, and the Knoxville Seven, while also recognizing the contributions of previously marginalized artists, most notably brothers Beauford and Joseph Delaney, as well as the self-taught Bessie Harvey. The KMA enters its next organizational chapter by way of a programmatic vision that pushes our purview into a more expansive geography. Under the banner of Appalachian Imaginary, the Museum presents a dynamic series of exhibitions that embrace a wider lens with which to see our site, and ourselves. Located at 1050 World’s Fair Park Drive in downtown Knoxville, the museum is open Tuesday through Saturday (10:00 AM–5:00 PM) and Sunday (1:00–5:00 PM). Admission and parking are free. Learn more at knoxart.org.
Press Contact: Sarah Kaplan, skaplan@knoxart.org, 865-934-2034
