For the second year in a row, the National Arts Honors Society (NAHS) will be holding its annual Winter Week art show virtually due to COVID-19.

To prepare for the show, art teachers Amy O’Connell and Veronique Latimer photograph art done by students in visual art classes during the first semester and upload it to an online platform called Kunstmatrix. After that, it is mostly in the hands of students in NAHS to run the show.

“NAHS has formed these little groups,” O’Connell said. “We have our curators, our poster designers and our ad team, and they’re all spearheading putting this show together. I’m looking forward to seeing how they curate the show and what it looks like because Ms. Latimer and I collect the artwork and upload it, and then we sit back. The students really put it all together, so it’s exciting to see the finished product when it’s time for it to go live.”

The job of the NAHS curators is to decide where the pieces go and how well they fit together. That way, as visitors “walk” through the virtual gallery, there will be a purposeful flow to the placement of the artwork.

“We’re planning out the layout and where to place each piece of artwork to make [an online museum],” senior and head of the curating team for the NAHS art show Isabelle Wang said.

A student who saw Kunstmatrix being used in a college level class introduced the program to NAHS last year, when they used it for their first virtual show. The platform creates an online space that looks 3D, so, similarly to in-person shows in past years, visitors can take time to look around at the art. It can even display 3D pieces to look like they are sitting on pedestals which is how art from ceramics class will be displayed.

“Similar to last year, the show will look like a physical exhibit, but it will be virtual and interactive,” senior Vice President of NAHS and head of the ad team for the art show Dora Chen said. “Visitors can walk through, click on items and view names and descriptions of the pieces.”

Although seeing the art in person may be ideal, the NAHS has adjusted well to using the platform, and there are positives that come with the show being online, like its accessibility. The show will be up for about a month, giving everyone more time to visit it.

“What I like about the virtual show is that we can keep it up,” O’Connell said. “We’re going to keep it up for a month, so people can tune in any time, and it’s not just a one and done. With the shows that we’ve had live here, we have to take it right down at the end because we’ve had it in the commons, and that’s where students eat.”

While a large part of the show will be concentration pieces from AP Art and Honors Art 4, the exhibit will showcase a wide range of creatively curated work from different art classes.

“It will be a mix of all different classes’ artwork, so it won’t be separated into Art 1, Art 2 and Art 3,” Wang said. “It will be combined together. [There will] probably be around three rooms where you can move around.”

NAHS members who are working hard to prepare the art show for when it goes live on Thursday, Feb. 3 are hoping that the exhibit will showcase the many talents in WHS’s visual art classes.

“I’m beyond excited about the student artwork this year,” Chen said. “There will be a great selection from metalworking to painting and ceramic classes. I’ve taken many of the art classes at WHS, and the visual art teachers we have are so supportive, and I can’t wait for the students and teachers to gain the recognition they deserve.”