CVA’s ‘Salon des Refusés’ now on display at community college

For artists, the jurying experience can leave them and their work out in the cold and not visible to the larger exhibition going public. This year, for the first time, the public will be able to view the works of artists who entered the Monmouth County Arts Council 2009 Juried Art Show and did not get accepted.

Their works may be viewed at the “Salon des Refusés,” a digital televised exhibition loop in the CVA Gallery at Brookdale Community College, Lincroft, that will run through March 1.

The Salon des Refusés, French for “exhibition of rejects,” is generally an exhibition of works rejected by the jury of the official Paris Salon, but the term is most famously used to refer to the Salon des Refusés of 1863. In that year, artists protested the Salon jury’s rejection of more than 3,000 works, and Emperor Napoléon III decreed that the rejected artists could exhibit their works in an annex to the regular Salon, and the Salon des Refusés was born.

Critics and the public ridiculed the refusés, which included such famous paintings as Édouard Manet’s “Luncheon on the Grass” (“Le déjeuner sur l’herbe”) and James McNeill Whistler’s “Girl in White.” Today by extension, Salon des Refusés refers to any exhibition of works rejected by a juried art show.

This year the MCAC and the Brookdale Community College Visual Art Department and CVA Gallery are collaborating to create a Salon des Refusés opportunity for artists who entered the MCAC Juried Art Show but were not accepted through the jurying process.

“We want to highlight the fact that juried exhibitions and the jurying process have inherent limitations that run the gamut from space restrictions, theme restrictions and the jurors’ own process and parameters. An artist’s work not accepted into a juried art show is not necessarily lacking or inferior; it may merely be a reflection of the inherent limitations, requirements or parameters set by galleries, museums and juries,” said Marie Maber, Art Department chair at Brookdale Community College.

The “Salon des Refuses” will be a digital loop displayed in the CVA gallery on a television and will run through March 1 concurrently with the MCAC Juried Art Show, which is at the Monmouth Museum on the Brookdale campus and within easy walking distance of the CVA gallery.

For more information, contact MCAC at 732-212-1890 or log on to the Web site at www.monmoutharts.org.