Nothing says more about a culture then the art it idolizes. It represents what it values, what it thinks about, and essentially what it deems worth remembering. Art is the representation of a people, encapsulating its essence on every level. The artists participating in this competition are helping to bring the culture back to its most important root, its humanity.

Now that the Bouguereau Catalogue Raisonné has been published, we are refocusing our efforts on Contemporary Living Realism. We are at the dawn of a new stage in the art world. With more and more atelier schools popping up on the map, and a new generation of students becoming teachers, we are hitting a critical level where realism is once again permeating the art world on the walls of important galleries and museum exhibitions.

On this note, we are in the middle of revamping our Living Artist/Master section of the website in a way that will allow more artists to participate with ARC without sacrificing our high standards. We recommend all Salon Finalists to apply. In coordination with this, we will be introducing two new sections to the website. The first is a section dedicated to upcoming and current exhibitions where we will list not only Old Master and 19th Century exhibitions, but solo or group exhibitions of our living artists as well. The second section is a list of ARC Approved Galleries, who help represent our artists and high quality realism. With over 500,000,000 hits a year and as many visitors as the Metropolitan Museum in New York, we expect these added sections will have a significant impact.

Kara Ross,
Director of Operations

This year's ARC Salon Competition continues to demonstrate the boundless potential of the human spirit and of the Realist paradigm's vocabulary to express the infinite creative spirit of the human soul. Please encourage every fine artist that you know to enter next year's ARC Salon™. We know that there are a number of top quality artists, including several ARC Approved Living Master's, whose lives, careers and commissions are doing so well that they did not have time to enter the salon. This is a mistake. Traditional Realism needs to always have the best of the best competing if we are to once again see Traditional Realism reach the heights achieved in the past. It takes the pressure of the most skilled, the most talented and the most creative minds competing for the top prizes, to achieve the kind of advancements that only can come from continuous feedback and cross pollination of skills, methods and brilliant ideas.

For those who did not win, and those who did not make it to the finals, many of you still demonstrated very high and advancing levels of quality and accomplishment. Please don't be discouraged. There is always next year, when with hard work and uncompromising dedication you just might be a winner. Many of this year's winners only won after several years of disappointment.

Once again, Please join all of us here at the Art Renewal Center in wishing warm and robust congratulations to all of our winners, honorable mentions and finalists.

Fred Ross,
Chairman

Click here to pre-order this year's ARC Salon Catalog with all the winners and finalists in full color.