COOS BAY — The Maritime Art Exhibit has always been a big deal for the Coos Art Museum.

It’s a reliable draw for visitors — the museum probably wouldn’t devote two months of prime tourist season every year to the show otherwise.

But it’s beginning to be a bigger deal for the artists who participate in it.

That’s because the American Society of Marine Artists has partnered with the museum to make the exhibit the society’s official western regional competition. ASMA is the largest national group of maritime artists and its members include the preeminent artists in the field.

For the Coos Art Museum, 15 years of investing in the exhibit has paid off with the prestige the affiliation with ASMA brings. The local exhibit already was the largest continuous maritime art competition on the West Coast, museum director Steven Broocks said, and it has become a niche that the museum has carved for itself.

“It’s a benefit to both (the museum and ASMA),” Broocks said. “It’s a fairly popular exhibit — historically, it gets the most traffic — and it puts them in touch with artists who may want to be members. And it adds prestige to our show.”

Despite the connection, the exhibit remains open to artists who are not ASMA members, as well as artists outside the western United States, which it has consistently drawn — among artists included this year is Spike Wademan of New Zealand. Broocks said ASMA’s only stipulation was that the museum choose its jurors from the society’s members — something that was occurring already most years.

It was one of the jurors, North Bend artist Dutch Mostert, who proposed the partnership between the museum and ASMA. The jury also includes Paul Mullally of Seattle and Ned Mueller of Renton, Wash., the exhibit’s featured artist. All are ASMA members and Mullally is a fellow, a special designation the society gives its most prominent members.

As featured artist, Mueller will choose the Best in Show award at the opening reception Saturday, and there is a complementary exhibit of his work in the Perkins Gallery.

Three other awards will be presented: the choices of the museum’s board of directors and the Oregon International Port of Coos Bay commissioners and the People’s Choice award, chosen by those attending the opening. Each award brings a $250 prize.

The exhibit includes 78 works by 44 artists from 11 states and New Zealand, with 66 paintings and 12 sculptures. Almost half of the artists are from Oregon, including eight on the South Coast.

Subjects vary from traditional boats and lighthouses to driftwood, a stack of crab pots and a red ball at the beach. Aside from a few dry-land scenes, what most have in common is water.

But there is also great variety in how the artists handle water, with shades of at least a dozen colors appearing and different styles of showing the relative amounts of wave action.

“That’s been an artistic challenge for hundreds of years,” Broocks said. “People think of water as blue, but it’s really not. It’s reflective of the sky and everything else.”

“It depends on their approach to how conventional and realistic they are,” added Del Smith, curator of the museum’s permanent collection.

The show runs through Sept. 20.

Also at the museum:

• “Graphic Art from the Permanent Collection” runs concurrently with the maritime show in the Mable Hansen Gallery. It features prints from the late 1960s and early ’70s, when the bulk of the museum’s acquisitions occurred, including works by important 20th-century artists such as Alexander Calder, Robert Rauschenberg and Larry Rivers. Broocks said tourists sometimes stop by during the summer wanting to see some of these well-known pieces in the collection and are disappointed to find them not on display.

• “Photography by Steve Prefontaine” will end Aug. 2. These black-and-white photos also display a style connected to the early ’70s, Broocks said. After it closes, another maritime-related show will occupy the Uno Richter Atrium: “Low Tide on the Oregon Coast,” featuring mixed media sculptures by Angela Haseltine Pozzi, will open Aug. 14.

Museum hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays and 1 to 4 p.m. Saturdays. Admission is $5.