A List of Photography Open Calls with Acquisition and Purchase Awards
From museums, galleries, and arts non-profits
Hi!
I’m very excited to share this list of 21 annual (or, mostly annual) open calls for photography with acquisition and purchase awards.
Acquisition or purchase awards have the double benefit of awarding the winning photographer a monetary prize and placing that photographer’s work in an established museum or gallery collection.
Acquisition into an institutional collection is highly sought after because…
It is indicative of your photographic work being very strong. Generally, museums, galleries, and arts organizations only collect work that is of a very high quality.
An institution with a permanent collection will typically have facilities to store and steward properly the art in that collection. That means, when acquired, your work will be treated in a way that protects it and prioritizes its longevity.
Finally, placing your work in a permanent collection means that the holding institution can include in future exhibitions curated from the collection. Certain institutions also make their collections available to researchers, collectors, students, and visiting artists. In other words, acquisition gives your work an ongoing life and helps it find new (and relevant) audiences.
Understandably, acquisition and purchase awards are very competitive. But, they are not impossible to attain! The images in this article (above and below) show the first work that I had acquired by an institutional collection. That acquisition happened as a result of applying to one of the calls listed below.
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Many of the calls I’ve included here are tied to photography festivals or group exhibitions, whereas others are standalone calls for acquisition/purchase awards without an accompanying exhibition.
In the case that a given hosting institution has a dedicated, general webpage for the opportunity, I have linked that. However, many institutions create new pages (and URLs) for each year’s call. In those cases, I have linked the hosting institution’s home page, which will always link out to the newest call when it is live each year.
I have not indicated general dates, since many institutions open their calls at different times every year. However, for calls that are open at the time of this article’s publication, I have indicated the upcoming deadline and provided a link to the application page.
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A List of Annual Open Calls with Acquisition and Purchase Awards
See the static webpage version of this article here.
The Print Center’s Annual International Competition Awards
Eligibility: International
The Print Center (Philadelphia, PA, USA) hosts an annual international competition that highlights local, national, and international artists using print-making and photography in intriguing and innovative ways. The list of awards each year is extensive. It includes solo exhibition opportunities, cash prizes, as well as three separate purchase awards to acquire artists’ work for the permanent collections at the Art Museum of West Virginia, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Working Artist’s Photography Award
Eligibility: International
Working Artist Org (Tacoma, WA, USA) regularly hosts a photography acquisition award call. The award grants one recipient $1,000 in exchange for one piece (or a small series of pieces) to be acquired by the Working Artist Org permanent collection.
Note: At the time of publication, this call is open. The coming deadline is April 19, 2026.