Mark,

Nobody judges?
Invariably there will be better place to hang than other in the exhibit hall. Clearly near the entrance as you walk in will be preferred to behind a pole near the lavatories. Who gets to decide which artists hang where?

What if there are more paintings and artists than there is room?
Does every artist get to send in as many works as he or she wants?
Who decides what the limitations are?
Who arranges for the hall and the shipping?
Who takes responsibility if works are damaged?
Who pay for insurance?

Is it on a first come first serve basis?

Or do we permit the artists to pay for their space? Great artists may have not money, and paint splatterers born into wealth might be able to afford half the expenses.
How are decisions and preferential things to be decided in every aspect of this activity?

What of the lighting? One artist may insist on natural light, another dim light and a third halogen spots or floods. One man's spots may infringe on the space of another's incandescent lamps.

How high are they all hung? If from floor to ceiling, who gets the floor and who the ceiling? ... again .... who gets to say? Who judges these questions, much less which are the best works?

There are sizable freight and crating costs, not to mention labor and administration.
Who get to make all these decisions, and who pays for it all?

How will the public get to know about it? How will it be publicized? What will the ads look like? Whose paintings get to be in the ads? And who decides that?

Do you know anyone who will pay for this without having any say in how it's done?

I don't know such a person. In fact, I don't know anyone else who is willing to pay for this even if they do get to decide all these things.

Perhaps we should force the tax payers to pay? But then who gets to decide how their money is spent? If it's to be a committee of artists, who gets to be on the committee?
Who gets to run that committee? Must all the committee members recuse themselves from the benefits? Do you know artists willing to do the hundreds of hours of administrative work while being not permitted entry themselves due to fear of appearances?

Utopian thought always occupies territory of practical impossibility.
I don't fault you for your fantasy, but I would rather spend my time and efforts dealing with the possible. Then within those realistic constraints do my very best to keep the process as fair and evenhanded and objective as humanly possible.
If you feel that objectivity is not possible, my answer is that it is only by recognizing the value in objectivity, and the continuous striving to achieve objectivity, that we ensure that the unfair, the biased, the corrupt and the self dealers, will not run away with our ARC Salon, our Scholarships and scholarship, our projects and competitions, and become just one more in a seemingly endless chain of prior cynical failures.

Truth similarly maybe nearly impossible to completely nail down all the time in any number of things, but it is the striving for truth, valuing of truth, and the commitment to our heavenly best to find the truth, that keeps us from straying down any number of dangerous paths.

Fred

Exhibition Seeking Objectivity and Truth