It's a special month for the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards as their Art.Write.Now.Tour—a stunning traveling exhibition of more than 130 pieces of Award–winning work—stops in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: the birthplace of what is now Scholastic Inc.
In the summer of 1920, fresh out of college, Maurice R. Robinson took a job in his hometown of Pittsburgh, writing for the Chamber of Commerce. While on assignment interviewing the Pittsburgh Superintendent of Schools, Robinson saw some wall charts projecting the number of students expected to pass through Pittsburgh's high schools in the next ten years. It was enough to spark a great idea: the creation of a weekly high school newspaper.
The Western Pennsylvania Scholastic was established in 1920, and in its second issue announced a prize story contest. The reward? $3 for each of the three best stories. Come 1923—just three years after founding what would go on to become Scholastic—Robinson's second longstanding vision began to form: to give high school students who demonstrate superior talent in the arts at least a fraction of the honors and rewards accorded to their athletic classmates. With that, the Scholastic Awards were born (a term that was not coined until 1926; they were initially announced as "competitions").
What started as a magazine contest is now the country's longest-running scholarship and recognition program for creative teens. Over the past six years alone, students in grades 7–12 have submitted more than one million works of art and writing, and more than $30 million has been made available in scholarships and awards. We like to think that Mr. Robinson would be proud of the program's growth.
Having already traveled to Savannah, Georgia and Albuquerque, New Mexico, the 2013–14 Art.Write.Now.Tour contiues to stun and inspire audiences in Pittsburgh at the Andy Warhol Museum—a fitting venue, since Andy Warhol received a Scholastic Award in 1945 at the age of 17. (You can learn more about the Pittsburgh exhibition in Spirit magazine, or in this segment from the local CBS affiliate.) Following the close of the Art.Write.Now.Tour in Pittsburgh on March 2, the exhibit will travel to Laramie, Wyoming. Stopping in four U.S. cities each year allows some of the incredible pieces of teen-produced art and writing to reach a broader audience and encourages other students to submit their work to the Awards.
If you happen to live in or near Pittsburgh, be sure to head to the Andy Warhol Museum before March 2! (Plus, this Saturday, February 22, there's a special Members-Only Teen Tour of the exhibition, led by The Milton Fine Curator of Art, Nicholas Chambers.) If you're not in Pittsburgh, don't worry—you can still follow the Tour online: @artandwriting, #AWNTour.
And while we're talking about the Awards, a huge congratulations to the regional winners! We're excited for the announcement of this year's national winners in March. In case you want a sneak peek at national judging, here's what some of the jurors had to say about the outstanding work.
Photo courtesy of The Alliance for Young Artists & Writers
