Beyond the Festival: Garden State Art Weekend Launches Year-Round Creative Platform

Garden State Art Weekend announces a year-round platform to be titled Garden State Art Guide as well as an upcoming Fall Art Guide.

Every year on the third weekend of April, Garden State Art Weekend showcases art by up-and-coming New Jersey artists by opening artist studios and various exhibition spaces to the public. The event takes place over a three-day period at spaces across New Jersey, with Manufacturers Village Artists in East Orange, New Jersey serving as the headquarters for the past three years. The first three editions of Garden State Art Weekend showcased over 100 venues across the state, with the third edition spanning 19 out of 21 counties in New Jersey. Visitors were able to navigate the festival via a digital guide and map. The Fourth annual 2027 Garden State Art Weekend will take place from April 16-18, 2027, and will continue as the flagship event of the Garden State Art Guide platform. 

Christine Romanell founded the Garden State Art Weekend while in residency at Manufacturers Village Artists and brought on Alison Pirie in 2024 as co-director. Both artists recognized the need for a platform dedicated solely to spotlighting and celebrating the visual arts in the Garden State. Their shared goals are to highlight visual artists and art venues in New Jersey; increase access to and attention on the visual arts of New Jersey; and to foster a stronger ecosystem for the visual arts in communities across the state. Building on the success of Garden State Art Weekend, the Garden State Art Guide aims to serve the community by generating more press for exhibitions, supporting emerging art collectors, encouraging collaboration between artists and art venues, and supporting more funding across the board for the visual arts in New Jersey.  

Garden State Art Guide will serve as a one-stop platform for discovering and connecting with contemporary art in New Jersey. Debuting in the fall of 2026, the first edition of the guide will highlight exhibitions and events in every region of the state through a digital guide and calendar. The organizations showcased in the guide will range from art museums to established and emerging galleries to artist collectives. After the debut of the Fall Art Guide, the Garden State Art Guide will become a year-round directory for exhibitions with an events calendar; planned features include exhibition reviews, artist interviews, and timely announcements on contemporary art. New Jersey visual art venues are encouraged to submit their Fall exhibitions and events via this form by Monday, August 31.