John Fergus Family Scholarship and Exhibition

3D rendering centered on a stylized banana surrounded by roman styled columns, approximately the size of the banana, in desert setting. The bottoms of the columns and banana are surrounded by greenery. Mountains of sand and red structures fill the background and a blue sky covers the top third of the image.

Overview

The John Fergus Family Scholarship is a juried art competition open to studio-based visual art and design students at The Ohio State University. Students submit their work for review by a jury of faculty from the departments of Art, Arts Administration, Education and Policy (AAEP), Design, and History of Art. Scholarship winners receive a $1,000 scholarship applied to their student account and exhibit their work at the annual Fergus Scholarship Award Exhibition at Urban Arts Space, a group exhibition featuring work selected from the scholarship recipients' applications.

Applications for the 33rd Annual John Fergus Family Scholarship are now open until November 12, 2024. The exhibition will take place in January 2025 at Hopkins Hall Gallery.

Apply Here

How to Apply

Submissions for the Fergus Scholarship will be accepted through November 12, 2024 at 5:00 PM ET.

The John Fergus Family Scholarship is available to full-time undergraduate (12 credit hours) and graduate students (8 credit hours) at The Ohio State University enrolled in a degree-granting program in the Departments of Art, Arts Administration, Education and Policy (AAEP), Design, and History of Art. Eligible students must not have outstanding fee balances on their student account for Autumn Semester of the current academic year.

Applicants are strongly encouraged to submit works that will not be, or have not been, exhibited in Urban Arts Space and Hopkins Hall Gallery. Selected work must be available for the exhibition between December 9, 2024–January 24, 2025 (tentative exhibition dates are January 6–17, 2025). Failure to provide work selected for the exhibition could result in disqualification and rescinding of the award.

To submit artwork for jury review, applicants should complete an initial application via the "Apply Now" button below. Within three business days of application submission, the applicant will receive a OneDrive link via their Ohio State email address to upload images of their artwork for review. Applications are not complete until images have been received via your assigned OneDrive folder.

Uploaded materials should contain:

No more than 6 images of works. (Allowed file types: gif, jpg, png, eps, tif, pdf, avi, mp4, mov, mp3, wav)
Files saved in the following format. (lastname_1.jpg, lastname_2.jpg, lastname_3.jpg, etc.)
A PDF or word document detailing credit information for each work. (title, materials, year, size or original duration)

Submission Requirements:

Specify in the credit if a video file is documentation of a physical piece or if an image is a detail/close-up.
Video files must be no more than 2 minutes in length. A full-length video may be submitted at a later date if selected for exhibition.

Applicants must carefully read and follow all guidelines and instructions. Submissions that do not adhere to these guidelines, or are submitted after the deadline, may not be eligible for an award.

Questions?

Contact Koen Vrij, Exhibition Logistics and Facilities Manager, at vrij.1@osu.edu for more information.

The John Fergus Family Scholarship was established with gifts from John C. and Elizabeth O. Fergus, and Robert H. Fergus, in honor of their mother, Edith Fergus-Gilmore.