| Sometimes all a fledgling program needs is a little word-of-mouth. When the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards first started in 1923, the competition received just seven entries. 85 years later, over 100,000 entries were received, and the program had blossomed into the country’s most prestigious initiative for recognizing the talent of creative high school students. This June, New York’s Broadway Gallery presented American Visions & Voices, part of Scholastic’s national art exhibition made possible by the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers. Of the 550 award winners who were invited to Manhattan for three days of celebration, including a ceremony at Carnegie Hall, a small percentage received the American Visions and Voices Award for Visual Art, which singled out individual artworks for their originality and authenticity of vision. | 
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Mai Wang
American Visions & Voice Exhibition was on display at Broadway Gallery in June.
Courtesy of the Scholastics Society.Sometimes all a fledgling program needs is a little word-of-mouth. When the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards first started in 1923, the competition received just seven entries. 85 years later, over 100,000 entries were received, and the program had blossomed into the country’s most prestigious initiative for recognizing the talent of creative high school students. This June, New York’s Broadway Gallery presented American Visions & Voices, part of Scholastic’s national art exhibition made possible by the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers. Of the 550 award winners who were invited to Manhattan for three days of celebration, including a ceremony at Carnegie Hall, a small percentage received the American Visions and Voices Award for Visual Art, which singled out individual artworks for their originality and authenticity of vision.
The works featured in the show included everything from sculptures to large-scale photographs to a handmade artist’s notebook filled with collaged antique images. Although it was open to the public, the exhibit was also mounted for the artists themselves—at the opening reception, the young awardees proudly posed next to their prize-winning creations as parents and teachers snapped mementos. The mission behind the Scholastic awards program is clear: find the country’s most talented young artists, whether they attend a public high school in Idaho or a private academy in Massachusetts, and reward them for their hard work so that they’ll keep on developing their unique artistic visions. Past award winners have included Richard Avedon and Andy Warhol. The enthusiastic response to the work (everyone agreed it was the best high school art being made in the country) indicated that future art stars could very well have been featured in this year’s exhibit. More than anything, American Visions & Voices reminded us that good art is still being made by the next generation.
