This year's judge is Darrell Taylor - Curator and Assistant Director at the Waterloo Center for the Arts in Waterloo, IA. His responsibilities include promoting the Center and its programming; acquiring, storing, and exhibiting collections; selecting exhibition themes and designs; organizing tours, lectures, workshops, and performances; art installation and fundraising; and conferring with the Executive Director. He is also the manager of the fall Holiday Arts Festival and for the artists of the spring Chroma63 Midwest Art & Sound event.

From 2003 to 2023 he was the Gallery Director and Overseer of the Permanent Art Collection at the University of Northern Iowa. He served as the Gallery's interim director two years before that appointment and taught as an adjunct instructor in art foundations. In 2005, he wrote a successful Conservation Assessment Program grant for the UNI Permanent Art Collection. In 2010, with American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds, he supervised the renovation of the UNI Permanent Art Collection storage facility. And in 2015 and 2018, he wrote two successful IMLS Museums for America Collection Stewardship project grants to identify art objects for conservation and treatment.

Taylor is also an artist with B.F.A., M.A., and M.F.A. degrees in intermedia art from the University of Iowa. His performances, photographs, drawings, and collages have been presented nationally and internationally. Previous projects include Orte des Begehrens Project (1998) and Rites of Identity Project (1999), both of which were collaborations between the University of Iowa and the University of Dortmund in Germany. In 2003 and 2007, he participated in project collaborations between UNI and Herzen State University in St. Petersburg, Russia.