Juried (competition)

A juried competition is a competition in which participants' work is judged by a person or panel of persons convened specifically to judge the participants' efforts, either by the competition's stated rubric or by a subjective set of criteria dependent upon the nature of the competition or the judges themselves. For example, in a juried competition where participants compete against each other for a monetary prize, for inclusion in a show or publication, or for representation by a gallery, the work presented is judged by one or more persons, often experts, for such prize, inclusion, or representation.

The phrase 'juried competition' is usually used to describe creative contests: artistic and literary competitions rather than sports tournaments or academic and scholarship competitions, although such competitions have similarities. Generally, juried competitions are contests that individuals actively enter to compete for prizes, rather than events in which the competitors are passively nominated by others, such as the Academy Awards or the Turner Prize.

The Guggenheim Fellowship is an example of an award which straddles the line between a scholarship contest and a juried art competition. The phrase 'juried competition' is also applied to non-fine-arts contests which yet encompass distinctively creative endeavors: a cook-off is one such contest. Juried competitions also include contests in film and television, as well as new media.Britain's Got Talent and American Idol are both juried competitions, as is the Disposable Film Festival.

In very early juried competitions in Greece, under Aeschylus and his successors, theatrical contests "advanced to a high degree of importance" and were "placed under the superintendence of" (juried by) "the magistracy". The Greek god Agôn personifies solemn contests. During the Middle Ages in 1441, a public poetry competition called the Certame Coronario was held in Florence with the intention of proving that the spoken Italian language was not inferior to Latin.

...
Wikipedia