Des Moines Arts Festival®

The Des Moines Arts Festival is Iowa’s largest and most prestigious arts and cultural event drawing over, 200,000 people annually to downtown Des Moines the last weekend of June. For over 25 years, three free, three-day festival has served as a celebration of arts and culture and been crowned by its peers as one of the best festivals in the world.

Artists applications are reviewed through an industry renowned blind jury process. The jury, new each year, only see’s five images of the artists work with associated pricing, a booth image and hears the artist statement. No other information is provided and they do not jury by medium. In the first round, the jury see’s all applications without scoring so that it can see all applications. In the second round, the jury scores the applications on a 1 – 7 scale, with no 4. Finally, the jury begins rounds of voting by hand until the group is reduced to the final number of artist booths for the Festival.

Applications open each fall.