Crocker Kingsley 2022

By Brooke Abrames | November 22, 2022

Connect with the Exhibition

Proceeds from the Exhibition benefit both Blue Line Arts and the Kingsley Art Club.

The KAC presents engaging lectures, supports educational initiatives and is active in community outreach in the Sacramento area.

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About the Exhibition

The biennial Crocker-Kingsley exhibition continues a tradition that began in 1926 through a collaboration between the Crocker Art Museum and the Kingsley Art Club. Established in 1892 by fifteen Sacramento women, the Kingsley Art Club supports arts and culture in the community. Since then, the exhibition has become a national juried competition hosted by Blue Line Arts.

This year marks the 81st Crocker-Kingsley exhibition, a show that attracts emerging and established artists. Past Crocker-Kingsley exhibitors include many of the premier names in California art, including Robert Arneson, Kathryn Uhl Ball, Elmer Bischoff, Fred Dalkey, David Gilhooly, Ralph Goings, Gregory Kondos, Roland Petersen, Mel Ramos, Ruth Rippon, Fritz Scholder, Jerald Silva, and Wayne Thiebaud.

This year, more than 2,428 entries were submitted for consideration, from which juror Emma Saperstein, Chief Curator and Director of Education at the San Luis Obispo Museum of Art (SLOMA), selected 134 for display at Blue Line Arts in Roseville. The top five juried selections will receive cash prizes, with a total of $5,500 to be awarded during the opening reception. From this group, a team of Crocker Art Museum jurors will select five pieces—which may or may not have been accorded cash prizes—for display at the Museum between February 5 and April 30, 2022.

Juror's Statement

I have always felt like it is a sacred and holy thing, to be able to support and bear witness to the creative harvests of artists. While jurying the Crocker Kingsley 2022 exhibition, I was overwhelmed with the sheer volume of submissions, and all the personal and heart-felt experiences that motivated the work. It felt like an impossible – and yes, holy task to undertake. The 132 artists that are included in the Crocker Kingsley exhibition this year engage the breadth of the complexity of human experience – and the often blurry lines between fact and fiction, the space between sleep and awake, between dreams and reality. In some works, artists revisit charged personal memories – the early days of motherhood, homes destroyed by wildfires, the death of parents, real and imagined landscapes, the mundane details of contemporary life that are often unseen… In others, artists whimsically play with materials and form – lighthearted explorations of visual expression. In still others, artists seek to challenge their control of medium and material to try and find a personal best.

It is my hope for the visitors to this exhibition that they are invited to reflect on their own life experiences in personal and specific ways, and the nuances and complexities of what it means to be truly alive in this moment in time.

- Emma Saperstein

About the Juror

Emma Saperstein is a curator, educator, and arts administrator based in San Luis Obispo, CA. Her diverse experience includes serving as a studio manager for internationally recognized artist Titus Kaphar and nearly a decade of administrative, editorial, and curatorial projects in alternative arts and publishing communities. For the past four years she has worked as the Global Portal Curator for Shared_Studios and managed complex dialogue-based programming projects with the UN, BBC, the Obama Foundation, WGBH, and more. She is currently the Chief Curator & Director of Education at the San Luis Obispo Museum of Art.

Emma holds a Master’s Degree from Cal Poly in Educational Leadership, and a Master’s Degree in Curating from the University of Aarhus in Denmark.