The New York Academy of Art is pleased to announce its Annual Summer Exhibition, a juried show featuring new works from the Academy’s community of acclaimed and emerging artists. Opening on June 18th at Flowers Gallery in Chelsea, the show is curated by three celebrated members of the art world: Matthew Flowers, Managing Director of Flowers Gallery, Lesley Dill, artist, and Martha Schwendener, art critic for The New York Times. The exhibition aims to create a visual dialogue that disrupts expectations of the usual world of figurative art.

“This summer exhibition is a special viewing of the ever widening umbrella of NYAA philosophy. The works reveal a thorough, thoughtful, and playful investigation into the aesthetics of living. There is exquisite technique and rendering of textures from feathers, to skin, to cloth and trees and poetic austere architecture. It is a pleasure to see these many voices,” says Leslie Dill of the diverse range of paintings, drawings and sculptures shortlisted from over 700 submissions.

In collaboration with Flowers Gallery, the Academy will showcase its conceptually aware artists to a global audience. Flowers Gallery is an internationally recognized gallery with locations in London and New York. The dual programs exhibit a range of media by established and emerging artists. The gallery is an active publisher of prints and multiples, and has a growing department of contemporary international photography.

Founded in 1982 by artists, scholars and patrons of the arts, including Andy Warhol, the New York Academy of Art is a graduate school that combines intensive technical training in the fine arts with active critical discourse. Led by a dynamic faculty including senior critics Steven Assael, Will Cotton, Vincent Desiderio, Eric Fischl, Judy Fox, Kurt Kauper and Jenny Saville, the Academy believes that rigorously trained artists are best able to realize their artistic vision. Academy students are taught traditional methods and techniques and encouraged to use these skills to make vital contemporary art.