Selections from the Art of the State Purchase Award Collection
Past Exhibit
The exhibit was curated by The State Museum of Pennsylvania and coincides with the 50th-anniversary celebrations of both the Pennsylvania Governor’s Residence and Art of the State in 2018.
Art of the State is an annual juried exhibition that has been showcasing the creations of Pennsylvania’s artists since the late 1960s. The exhibit goes on display every summer in the first-floor galleries of The State Museum of Pennsylvania, located across from the State Capitol Building in downtown Harrisburg. The show is co-presented by the museum and Jump Street. The State Museum of Pennsylvania is administered by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission (PHMC).
As part of each year’s show, the museum selects one or more works of art to be purchased for its permanent collections. Since the works featured in Art of the State have already been vetted through several layers of the jurying process, Purchase Awards represent an elite group of Pennsylvania artists. A recent inventory of the museum’s fine arts collection identified over 50 works associated with Purchase Awards. The museum displayed these works of art in an exhibition in honor of Art of the State’s 50th anniversary in 2017.