I was recently involved as the webmaster of an online art competition. It ran for a year and garnered 1,740 entries over the period of 12 months. There were 144 finalists chosen (12 from each month's entries).
At the end of the competition, the judges were supposed to select 12 winners and award the prizes. However, the quality of the art work was so good that the judges could only narrow the field to 16 paintings. So, the artists who created those 16 paintings were all contacted by telephone. The competition sponsors felt that they explained the situation adequately to each of those artists. The 16 paintings were sent to the judges and the final 12 winners were selected. The sponsors of the competition then chose to honor the 4 additional paintings with recognition by creating a new award category and funding $1,000 total in merchandise credit ($250 per artist).
I must add that EVERYONE involved in running the competition did their absolute best and had the best of intentions: the sponsors, the judges and myself. Most of the artists were thrilled with the way it was run.
However; a few artists obviously have sour grapes and insist on whining about the outcome. One of those artists was in the final group of 16 but his/her painting was not one of the 12 winners. He/she did win the "bonus" award of $250 merchandise, which was not even in the original contest rules. Unbelievably, this artist is whining that "the rules were changed"...."I wasn't properly informed"....waaaaah!
Another artist has threatened to "boycott" the sponsors because one of the winners won "too many" prizes.....waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!
Here's my advice. When you enter a contest, make the decision to accept the rules and the outcome. Understand that contests are run by humans and you may disagree with the judges' decisions. But don't turn into a baby.
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I've have been in my share of art competitions and have learned that, while many of us can agree on a core group of criteria to be used to determine winners, almost none of us can agree which paintings or artists embody those criteria the best. It is completely subjective. If we don't all know that, it can be very hard to take. Knowing that, why do we insist on hosting/entering competitions? That would be the real question to look at. While I agree that the artists in question make themselves look bad by complaining, especially in a public enough forum that you heard them. But, cut them a little slack. Think of how difficult it would be to invest your heart and soul in producing a work so good that you thought it worthy of capturing a judge's attention and then to be told, even if by omission, that essentially it isn't. Secretly, it's your baby-or at least one of them. All artists feel a twinge when they don't win, or get in, or sell, or whatever. For some the twinge is stronger, for others it is very faint. In the end, we all want to feel that the judging is fair---which, because it is subjective by nature, it really can't be. So, failing that, we want the judging to be as fair as possible. Then, we can look at the winners and try to see what the judges saw so we can, hopefully, make our own work stronger. It is more productive to publish the judge's comments and reasons for choosing the work, than to say, "don't turn into a baby." I'd like to see more publishing of that material in the future. I have only rarely seen this. Perhaps you can start a trend.
Thanks,
Tracey