2024 International Open Call

Mattress Factory is pleased to announce our 2024 International Open Call for artists-in-residence. Each artist will produce a solo exhibition of new work at the museum.  

Submissions accepted from January 4 until February 8, 2024. 

Mattress Factory, a “By Artists, For Artists” contemporary art museum, is excited to announce its International Open Call. This opportunity is free and open to artists of any medium from anywhere in the world. A distinguished panel of Mattress Factory alumni artists will jury this call, continuing our commitment to centering artist voices. The Artist Review Panel consists of Jon Rubin, Harrison Kinnane Smith, and Julie Schenkelberg. The panel will review submissions and select artists for residencies and solo exhibitions at Mattress Factory in 2025 and 2026. 

Mattress Factory alumni artists know better than anyone what our resources and capacity can accomplish and how special our community is. The panel offers a perspective unlike any other – one that is deeply familiar with the museum, engaged in many aspects of the contemporary art field, and invested in pushing our exhibitions program in new directions. 

During their residency, artists are free to explore wherever their process leads them while they live and work on Pittsburgh’s Northside. Mattress Factory supports each artist’s process from development through production, installation, and exhibition by providing the following: 

–Artist honorarium  
–Production and materials budget  
–Transportation to and from Pittsburgh  
–Accommodation in Mattress Factory residence 
–Per diem during on-site installation  
–Fabrication and production support  

Eligibility and submissions 
The International Open Call is open to artists of any medium from anywhere in the world. Artists are invited to submit a portfolio of work and supporting documentation, which will be juried by the Artist Review Panel. 

–2-page CV 
–Short bio (200 words) 
–Artist Statement (200 words)  
–Up to 10 media files for consideration 
–Do not include project proposals 

Submissions close February 8, 2024 at 11:59pm, EST. 

Submit here.

About Mattress Factory: Founded in 1977, Mattress Factory is a contemporary art museum that showcases site-specific art created by artists-in-residence from around the world. Located in Pittsburgh’s historic Northside, just minutes from Downtown Pittsburgh, the museum’s public campus includes two historic homes and a converted mattress warehouse. In addition to temporary exhibitions created by artists-in-residence, Mattress Factory also is home to long-term works by Greer Lankton, James Turrell, Winifred Lutz, Yayoi Kusama, and more.  

About the Artist Review Panel 
Jon Rubin is an interdisciplinary artist who creates interventions into public life that re-imagine individual, group, and institutional behavior. He has exhibited at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Mercosul Biennial; the Shanghai Biennial; the Carnegie International, The Lyon Biennale; the Solomon Guggenheim Museum; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver; as well as The Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporaneo, Mexico. 

Julie Schenkelberg lives and works in Cleveland, Ohio. Her practice is nomadic and she frequently relocates for months at a time, throughout places such as Detroit, Pittsburgh, NYC, Italy, Norway and more.  She creates large-scale installations using discarded domestic and industrial materials. Her installations have been displayed at the Mattress Factory Museum, the Museum of Art and Design, NYC, UNTITLED Miami and art spaces throughout the midwest. She received a BA in Art History at the College of Wooster, OH, and MFA at the School of Visual Arts, NY, NY. 

Harrison Kinnane Smith is an artist whose work explores legal, economic, and racial systems of power. His work has been published by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and exhibited at the Mattress Factory Museum in Pittsburgh, where his Sed Valorem installation mobilized the commercial value of the museum to repay a Black, overtaxed homeowner in the museum’s North Side neighborhood. Smith’s projects have been covered by Hyperallergic, NPR, and Bloomberg CityLab. He was born in Pittsburgh and lives in LA. 

For more information, contact: Gabriela Sanchez, Marketing Project Manager, gsanchez [​at​] mattress.org / T 412-313-5408