Midwest Nice Art - "Archive the West" Juried Exhibition

archive the west is our Summer 2025 online juried exhibition.

The Western United States has become a long-standing art trope. Images of Monument Valley and other iconic landmarks have saturated the art-sphere, but these often seem like one-offs or fetishization devoid of a necessary context. Absent a larger series or archive, these depictions often rely on shallow understandings of the region’s cultural history. For this call, we want to see depictions of the American West that draw upon personal or collective archives. Use them as inspiration or building blocks in the work itself. Dig into dusty prints or negatives that speak to the wild beauty, austere landscape, and diverse happenings of the American West, or provide original pieces from a current project that incorporates or addresses the archives’ informing role. We want to see them!