Downtown Arts 2025-26

Downtown Arts provides support for and generates awareness about members of Greensboro's visual arts community while enhancing the downtown built environment with original works of art. Selected artists will receive compensation and promotion through City-led initiatives.

Applicants can choose to be considered for one or both opportunities: Art on Downtown Kiosks offers a $500 honorarium to up to ten artists whose work is selected for digital display on 11 digital kiosks located throughout downtown from February 2025 through January 2026. Each selected artist's image will be displayed in a rotating slideshow for 10 weeks. Artists should submit previously created work as high-resolution images (minimum 980 x 980 pixels and 72 dpi). Art in City Hall awards a $3,000 commission to one artist to create a new, original work no larger than 36" x 24" (or 36" x 24" x 24" if three-dimensional) reflecting their creative perspective on Greensboro in 2024. The original work will be placed in the City's permanent collection and displayed periodically in public facilities. The work will be photographed or scanned, enlarged to 10' x 20', reproduced onto vinyl, and installed on the council chamber wall in the Melvin Municipal Office Building from June 2025 through June 2026.

Both opportunities are available for Greensboro-based artists working in painting, sculpture, drawing, ceramics, glass, photography, digital arts, or fiber arts. Applicants must be full-time residents of Greensboro, at least 18 years of age, and cannot be City of Greensboro employees or their immediate family members. Each submission must include a resume, high-quality headshot, artist statement (maximum 2,000 characters), and 5-10 high-resolution images of work created within the past five years. Work samples should not include logos, commercial speech, religious or political messages, explicit sexual imagery, nudity, or graphic depictions of violence. Artists interested in the Art in City Hall commission must also submit a statement (maximum 2,000 characters) describing ideas and concepts they would explore in the commissioned work.