About the 2008 Judges

MARK ORMOND
Mark Ormond's primary interest and expertise is in contemporary art. With over 25 years of experience in the art world, he has organized dozens of museum exhibitions – and scheduled, coordinated, designed and installed over one hundred others. In addition, he has edited, authored and contributed to numerous brochures, catalogues and publications on artists such as Joel Shapiro, Robert Rauschenberg, Francesco Clemente, Robert Thiele, David E. Davis, Jim Couper, and Yayoi Kusama.

After completing graduate and undergraduate programs in art history at George Washington University and the University of Pennsylvania, respectively, he held museum positions in the areas of education, curatorial, collections management and administration. He is also a graduate of U.C. Berkeley's Museum Management Institute.

During his ten-year association with the Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, he was appointed Senior Curator & Deputy Director for Collections and Programs. While in Miami, he became the first Curator and then was appointed Director of the Center for the Fine Arts (now the Miami Art Museum). He has also held positions at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

As an independent curator, author, lecturer and consultant since 1999, Mark remains engaged in a broad range of contemporary art projects.

TANJA SOFTIC´
Tanja Softic' earned her B.F.A. in painting in 1988 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina and M.F.A. in printmaking in 1992 at Old Dominion University. She works in the media of printmaking, drawing and book arts. Drawing on sources as varied as medical and botanical illustration, the history of mnemotechnics, and study of natural and architectural structures, her work addresses the relationships of senses and intellect, memory and identity.

She is a recipient of the 1996 National Endowment for the Arts/ Southern Arts Federation Visual Artist Fellowship and Soros Foundation—Open Society Institute Exhibition Support Grant in 1997. Her work is included in numerous collections in the United States and abroad, among them New York Public Library, Library of Congress Print Department and New South Wales Gallery of Art in Sydney, Australia. She participated in the 12th International Print Triennial in Cracow, Poland and won a First Prize at the The 5th Kochi International Triennial Exhibition of Prints, Ino-cho Paper Museum in Kochi, Japan in 2002. Recently, she completed print projects at Flying Horse Press, Tamarind Institute and Anderson Ranch's Patton Printshop. Tanja is Associate Professor of Art at the University of Richmond.