This year´s exhibition, featuring 100 works, is on view in the Norma R. Ory Gallery at the Junior School.

Gold Key artists, their parents, teachers, and guests will be honored Monday, February 12 at a reception at the Harris County Department of Education. Their works will then be shipped to New York to compete with about 15,000 entries from across the nation for the National Gold and Silver Key Awards. Entries receiving a National Gold Key will hang in the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., for a month this summer. In the 2006 competition, 29 Harris County students were national award winners. (Thirty-nine young writers from Harris County also received national honors in 2006, a record for Harris County.)

Works by students who earned regional Silver Key recognition are on view at Texas Art Supply, 2001 Montrose Boulevard. The show is open during regular store hours through January 14, 2007, when there will be a reception for the artists, their parents, teachers, and guests.

The Harris County Department of Education is the regional sponsor for both the art and the writing programs of the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. Students from ¬more than 90 public and private middle schools and high schools from districts throughout the county participated in this year´s program. Of the 1,103 entries competing in the art category, 129 earned regional Gold Keys, with 100 individual awards and 29 portfolio awards - 21 in photography and eight in art. Another 88 students earned Silver Keys. All other students whose work reached regional competition receive certificates of merit. A panel of judges made up of educators, artists, and others in the art community select the Gold Key winners.

The Scholastic Art & Writing Awards program was founded in 1923 by Scholastic Inc., the nation´s leading publisher and distributor of children´s books and educational materials. The awards have grown into the largest and longest running recognition program for the visual and literary arts in the United States. -- www.mfah.org