Every February, thousands of collectors and art lovers walk through Julian B. Lane Riverfront Park expecting to see the best work the country has to offer. What most of them never think about is the small group of people who make that quality possible months before a single tent goes up. This year, Gasparilla Arts has introduced four new Selection Jurors who will spend the coming weeks combing through hundreds of applications to decide who earns a spot in the 2027 festival lineup.
Selecting jurors is one of the quieter but more consequential decisions the organization makes each year. These are the people who will sit with hundreds of portfolios, weigh technical skill against originality, and ultimately shape what visitors experience on festival weekend. For 2027, the panel brings together curators from three of Tampa Bay’s most respected institutions, along with a working artist and educator whose own practice blends traditional craft with new technology.
A Curator With Deep Florida Roots
Noah Cox, Assistant Curator at the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, is a Florida native through and through. He was born, raised, and educated in the state, which gives him a perspective that outside jurors sometimes lack. Cox has curated several notable exhibitions during his time at the museum, including a 2024 to 2025 show exploring the art of New Guinea and a 2026 exhibition examining abstraction as a movement. He is also working on the next installment of Skyway, the regional triennial that brings together contemporary artists from across the Tampa Bay area.
Cox earned his undergraduate degree in Art History from New College of Florida before heading overseas for a master’s degree at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. Before joining the MFA in 2023, he spent time working in exhibitions and public programming at Architecture Sarasota. That combination of local grounding and international training is exactly the kind of balance Gasparilla Arts looks for when building a jury panel.
Bringing a Ringling Museum Perspective
Ola Wlusek serves as Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, one of the most respected art institutions in the state. She also holds a faculty position at Florida State University, which keeps her connected to emerging talent as well as established names.
At the Ringling, Wlusek has curated a range of exhibitions that reflect a genuine commitment to underrepresented voices. One recent show focused on abstraction and symbolism in the work of nine Native American women artists, while an earlier exhibition centered on contemporary Seminole art. Like Cox, she is also involved with the Skyway triennial as a co-curator, which means these two jurors already share a working relationship built on evaluating regional talent together. Wlusek holds a master’s degree in Contemporary Art Theory from Goldsmiths, University of London.
A Gallery Director Who Understands Community Access
Jocelyn Boigenzahn brings a different kind of experience to the panel. As Director of College Galleries at the University of South Florida, she has spent years running the Scarfone/Hartley Gallery, growing its reach into the surrounding community through a steady stream of professional and local exhibitions. Her work extends into the University of Tampa’s art collection as well, where she has helped showcase both student and faculty work, most visibly through a 200 piece installation that opened the new Ferman Center for the Arts.
Boigenzahn is currently leading an effort to digitize the University of Tampa’s permanent collection, a project that makes decades of regional art history more accessible for research. That kind of behind the scenes work rarely gets public attention, but it speaks to the same instinct that makes for a strong festival juror: patience, thoroughness, and a real interest in preserving what makes a local art scene distinct.
An Artist’s Eye on the Panel
Rounding out the group is Anat Pollack, Assistant Professor of Art at USF and a working artist in her own right. Pollack describes her practice as convergent media, blending traditional techniques with digital tools. Her work has appeared at the Museum of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg and the Tampa Museum of Art, including as part of the same Skyway triennial that connects several of her fellow jurors.
Pollack’s newest body of photogravures, titled Réte, has been traveling to shows around the country in 2026, with stops that include the Cleveland Print Fair and the Zanesville Museum of Art in Ohio. She also has an upcoming site specific commission opening in 2027 at the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art in Utah. Beyond her visual work, Pollack picked up an unexpected honor for a video and dance project called The North Wind and The Sun, which won Best Dance Film Short at the Kiez Berlin Film Festival. Having a practicing artist on the panel matters because it means the jury includes someone who has personally gone through the process of submitting work for review, a perspective that curators alone cannot fully replicate.
Why the Jury Panel Matters
It is easy for festival attendees to focus on the finished product, the rows of tents and the artists standing beside their work. But that experience only exists because a small group of experts spent weeks making difficult calls about who gets in and who does not. With 889 show applications submitted last year, the most since 2020, the jurors have no shortage of work ahead of them.
This year’s panel reflects something Gasparilla Arts has been leaning into more deliberately, connecting the dots between the region’s museums, universities, and working artists rather than pulling jurors from any single institution. Cox and Wlusek’s shared involvement with Skyway, paired with Boigenzahn’s community focused gallery work and Pollack’s active studio practice, gives the 2027 selection process a range of perspectives that should serve artists and attendees well.
Applications for the 2027 festival are being reviewed now, and the results of the jurors’ work will be visible in February when the show opens along the Tampa riverfront once again. For artists curious about what these jurors are looking for, or collectors wanting to know more about the people shaping next year’s lineup, the full juror bios are available on the Gasparilla Arts website.
