In the April, 1949 issue of Art News, an ad announced a "New International Art Award". The headline read: "Hall Brothers, Inc., The Makers of Hallmark Cards Announce the Hallmark Art Award - An International Art Competition Under the Direction of Wildenstein Galleries." This one-page advertisement inaugurated the first of five International Art Awards sponsored by the company. The stated goals of the competition were to "encourage fine art, ... to bring contemporary recognition to artists of today, ... [and] to broaden public appreciation of fine art."

The first competition was limited to Christmas themes, "broad enough to allow for individual freedom of expression, yet sufficiently narrow to present all painters with the same initial challenging problem." Painters from France and the United States were invited to submit one work. More than ten thousand artists responded.

A prestigious jury selected 100 works for inclusion in a traveling exhibition. Noted award-jurors included Lloyd Goodrich of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, Andrew Ritchie of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and Alfred Frankfurter of Art News.

The winning paintings were exhibited at the Wildenstein Gallery in New York City, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Los Angeles County Museum, and the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City. Among the painters who participated in the first Hallmark Art. Twenty of the 100 paintings exhibited were purchased by Hall Brothers, Inc. including works by Eugene Berman, Jean Carzou, Philip Evergood, Edmund Lewandowski and Mitchell Siporin.

The company's second venture into international art was launched in 1952. While this competition was limited to watercolors on a Christmas theme, entry was open to "any artist over 18 residing in the Americas or in countries of Western Europe." Artists from thirty-three countries submitted 4,500 paintings. Although finalists were selected on the basis of artistic merit rather than geographic origin, the resulting exhibition included artists from fifteen countries.

Jurors for the second competition included John Baur of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, Alfred Frankfurter of Art News, and art historian John Rewald.

The touring exhibition of 100 watercolors traveled to the Wildenstein Gallery in New York, the California Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco, the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh, The Cincinnati Art Museum in Ohio, the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts in Texas, The Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, the Portland Art Museum in Oregon, and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota. A total of forty paintings from the Second International Art Award were purchased for the collection.

In contrast to the first and second Hallmark competitions, which were open to all artists of selected countries, the third competition was by invitation. Contemporary artists from the United States, Canada, England, Ireland, France and Italy were asked to create paintings on a Christmas theme. In this way, works by such noted artists as Alex Colville, Richard Pousette-Dart, Maurice Utrillo, and Robert Vickrey were acquired.

The 50 watercolors in this exhibition were noted for their impressive diversity of style and technique, and were seen by many thousands of viewers during a 21-city tour during 1956- 58. Highlights of the tour included venues at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut, the St. Louis Art Museum, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, and the Des Moines Art Center in Iowa.

The Fourth International Hallmark Art Award was the first of the series to have no limitations on either medium or subject. The removal of thematic restrictions resulted in an exhibition that more accurately reflected contemporary trends in the art world. Fifty artists from sixteen countries in North and South America and Europe were invited to submit works. The result was a new level of quality and diversity, as important works by Edward Hopper, Peter Hurd, Charles Sheeler, and Kees Van Dongen, Maurice Vlaminck and Andrew Wyeth, were acquired.

Jean Lipman, editor of Art in America, wrote the following in an essay in the exhibition catalogue:

"The Hallmark Art Award competitions serve a dual function, besides contributing to the fame of the sponsoring company: They encourage and support, without in any way restricting, a number of contemporary artists. Furthermore, they stimulate public interest in contemporary painting through the well-publicized museum circuit of exhibitions. The artists and the industry have, in this instance, cooperated to excellent purpose, and it would be a fine thing for such a model to multiply."

The exhibition traveled to 15 museums in 1958-59 including the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle, and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art in California.

The theme of the Fifth International Art Award differed from the more general character of the previous exhibitions. A group of "Fifty Painters of Promise," ranging in age from 24 to 81, were selected by an international jury of distinguished critics. Among the painters chosen for inclusion in the exhibition were Pierre Alechinsky, Jane Freilicher, Ivon Hitchens, Elaine de Kooning, Kazuo Nakamura, David Park, Fairfield Porter, Arnulf Rainer, Thorvaldur Skulason, and Jack Youngerman.

In the foreword of the exhibition catalogue, JC Hall stated that the artists selected deserve recognition now, not in 50 or 100 years. He continues:

From the beginning, it has been our purpose to give today's "painters of promise" a helping hand and to provide millions of Americans across the country with an opportunity they might otherwise miss to see paintings in the full range of current styles and be able to feel their influence while it is still contemporary with our own lives.

While paintings in the early competitions and invitational exhibitions were acquired for potential use in Hallmark product, the works in this exhibition were purchased strictly on the basis of artistic merit. This group of paintings is distinguished by a much larger scale and a prevalence of abstraction.
The Fifth International Art Award exhibition traveled to 29 museums including the Denver Art Museum, the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, the Arkansas Art Center in Little Rock, and the Mint Museum in Charlotte, North Carolina.

When this final Hallmark Art Award program was concluded, a total of 357 artists from 27 countries had been represented in five exhibitions. An estimated two million people had seen the paintings in 100 exhibitions, held in nearly forty museums from coast to coast. Clearly, this pioneering series of exhibitions did much to promote contemporary art to a very broad audience