Boardwalk Art Show to Celebrate 50th Anniversary

The will sponsor the 50th Boardwalk Art Show in Ocean City from Friday to Sunday, Aug. 3 to 5.

More than 50 artists from the East Coast will sell two-dimensional art in the mediums of watercolor, acrylic, oil, drawings, hand-pulled prints and photography.

The show will run under canopies on the Boardwalk, between Eighth and 11th streets from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Friday; and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.

"Many of our artists have been in this show for decades," Ocean City Arts Center Executive Director Rosalyn Lifshin said. "We even have a painter, Arlene Fisher of Lancaster, Pa., who is doing her 40th Boardwalk Art Show. I also hear from many visitors to Ocean City that they love the show and come every year to see it."

The Arts Center gives more than $2,000 in awards to participants. The awards are:

• Best of Show at $400
• Mayor's Choice at $200
• Four Awards of Excellence at $200 each
• Student Award at $200
• Five Honorable Mention Awards at $100 each.

In addition, the Arts Center purchases a piece of art each year for the permanent collection.

This year, in honor of the 50th Boardwalk Art Show, local artist Nancy Palermo, known for her beautiful murals, has created an acrylic painting that depicts the throngs of visitors and artists at the show. Prints of the painting will be sold by the Arts Center during the Boardwalk Art Show. 

Established in 1962, the Boardwalk Art Show not only was an immediate success in attracting art lovers from across the Delaware Valley, but was also the progenitor of the founding of the Ocean City Arts Center. The show demonstrated that there was such a strong interest in the arts among both the summer and year-round populations of Ocean City that city officials and local art enthusiasts used the event as a springboard from which to launch the Ocean City Arts Center.

The Arts Center was officially incorporated as a non-profit arts organization in 1967, and the Boardwalk Art Show immediately came under the 
Center’s aegis, where it has remained ever since — becoming, in the process, the center’s signature arts event. 

Over the years, the dates of the Boardwalk Art Show (which is always held on the first full weekend in August) have been consistently placed on the calendars of art lovers across the region. Both visitors and the year-round population have become accustomed to attending the three-day event as an opportunity to purchase all mediums of the fine arts directly from the exhibitors themselves.

Through the generosity of the City of Ocean City, the Arts Center rents spaces on the Boardwalk to qualified artists — thus the show falls into the category of a “juried show,” which means that artists must submit examples of their work to the Arts Center in order to qualify for admission. This process ensures a high-quality show of a diverse group of styles, mediums, and price-levels, and in so doing, guarantees a wide-range of artwork to satisfy nearly every taste.

The artists in the show also vie for a host of valuable monetary prizes that the Arts Center offers. Every spring, the Arts Center begins the process of selecting judges who spend an entire day during the show examining the paintings and photographs presented by the artists before arriving at a conclusion. Over the years, visitors and locals alike have enjoyed second-­guessing the judges, which makes the awards ceremony an exciting event.

The show generally attracts exhibitors of all backgrounds—seasoned veterans, 
recent art school graduates, self-taught artists, etc. It is the diversity among the exhibitors that makes the Show interesting and appealing. Although at one time, the show incorporated fine crafts, in recent years it has been limited to two-dimensional (and in a few categories, three-dimensional) fine arts. This makes it a rarity among outdoor shows on the Eastern Seaboard, some of which have lost their integrity as purveyors of the fine arts. 

— By Rosalyn Lifshin, Ocean City Arts Center