Curated Muse
Behind every creative work lies a purpose. Behind every great collection, a story.
From Hyperlux Magazine comes The Curated Muse Podcast—where we share intimate conversations with artists, collectors, and experts in art, design, and curation. Together, we explore the deep connections we form with objects—why we collect, what we create, and how these pieces shape our lives.
Through honest, thoughtful dialogue, we uncover the emotional ties to art and design, the history behind cherished items, and the magic of intentional living. This is The Curated Life—a celebration of inspiration, purposeful collecting, and meaningful creation.
Curated Muse
Guide to Showing Your Artwork in Online Galleries
Show Notes: https://hyperluxmagazine.com/curated-muse-podcast-guide-to-showing-your-artwork-in-online-galleries/
In this episode, we are going to talk about exhibiting your art online only, meaning you will be a part of an exhibition that's only online. It's not a part of a brick and mortar situation. And we're going to talk about juried art shows and if they are worth it and what's the point. So let's jump in and first talk about juried art shows. So when artists want to start creating connections in the world and they want to start exhibiting their work out in the world, often they don't know where to go. So they do stick with locally. They do stick with coffee shops or small art centers. And that is a really great way. Starting with your community, starting at home is really great. It's just one of the best things to do. But as you're ready to grow and perhaps you want to get outside your state, maybe you want to get outside the United States or whatever your country is, there is another way to get your art out there. And that's calls for art by being a part of juried exhibitions. So there is a love and hate for juried exhibitions. Often artists that are barely successful will roll their eyes at juried exhibitions and say, you know, you shouldn't pay to play. Like that's just not the best way to do it. But truly, if you're sitting in an art studio or you're sitting in your house and you're doing art and you want to start having opportunities, this is a really great place to start. As a career artist, this is how I started. I started with juried exhibitions and I started with a local juried exhibition and then moved to national and and then moved into international. And I got to meet a lot of people. I got to create some really wonderful connections. I won awards. I just, overall, it was a great opportunity. But here's what people don't like. They don't like the idea of it being a competition. And especially if something is like awarded, if they're giving first place, second place awards or honorable mentions or whatever the case may be, people don't like that competition. I do. So if you don't like competition, this is probably not the best thing for you. But if you do, it's really good. Not all of them are like that. Not all of them feel like that because not everything has awards, right? So a juried exhibition can be one of two ways. A juried exhibition could just be like you're in or you're out, and that's it. And then we're going to have the show. Or it can be you're in and out, you're in or you're out, and you can win an award along with it. It really just depends. But juried exhibitions are a great doorway for you to get into the adding different places to your resume, adding different galleries and locations that your work has been shown. So if you're looking for calls for art, all you have to do is go online and put into Google calls for art. There are numerous things like entrythingy.com where you will see some very prestigious galleries and some other more community-based galleries putting out calls for art to the public. And so that's a really great place to start. I do not think juried shows are negative at all. If you are mid-career or you're super successful, these may not be something that you need. You may already be connected with different galleries or already getting invitations, so this might not be something that you have to worry about. But there are a lot of people out there that have never exhibited their work, never shown in a gallery, And their dream is to put their art out there. And this is one of those great ways to do it. So another thing that I'm gonna talk about is galleries that show things only online. So while you're going through those calls for art, you may see that some galleries are only doing online shows, that you don't actually have to physically ship your work. A lot of them are going to have you physically ship your work to the gallery and it'll hang there, which The other thing is, don't forget, you're going to incur the cost of shipping, and then typically you'll incur the cost of shipping back if it doesn't sell. That's one of the pros of online exhibitions. There are pros and cons, I mean, just online, not generally online, but just online. There's no brick and mortar. So if you find a call for art... And they are basically saying, this is gonna be an online show only. You don't have to ship the work. If the artwork sells, then you ship it. There again is a pro and con. Okay, is it worth it for you to share your work online to an online gallery, get connected with potentially other viewers, other collectors, other people that may have never seen your work online, but your work isn't gonna hang in a physical location. The one thing I wanna say about that that's extremely interesting is that I know that artists think, well, if my work isn't in a physical location, that perhaps it's not gonna sell, unlike if it was hanging on a wall, it has more of an opportunity to sell. And I'm gonna speak to this from experience. As a gallerist, We found that 75% of our sales were online because that is where the world is right now. That is where a lot of collectors are going is finding art online. Not everybody has time to go walk down to a gallery or go to a gallery opening to buy art. Also, there's a desire to get things immediately. So a lot of galleries will send out collector's previews before... Anybody can even see it in person. Or sometimes they won't do any online at first, and then you have to come to the opening, and then everything that isn't sold there will then go online. It really just depends. But with our gallery, 75%, if not more, were being purchased online. So I do not think that there's anything wrong with exhibiting your work with a gallery online only. And if it's also farther away from you, so let's say the opportunity is international and you've had no international exposure yet, the amount of shipping it could cost you to ship there and ship back could be exorbitant. And having this opportunity to connect with collectors in a different country with an online exhibition might be really valid. It doesn't come with a lot of risk. The only real risk is, and I think every artist will understand this, is the risk of investing money into art supplies, into panels, into canvas, into paint to create the work. But it's not like they own the work. It's not like it's sitting there. Once this show is over, you're free to sell it on your own based on, obviously, the contract that you will sign. I mean, each exhibition... Each opportunity is going to come with certain things. So some galleries might say, hey, we'd like to keep the work up for two months after the show for us to have the ability to sell it. Other galleries might say 30 days. Once the show is over, the artwork's yours and we're done with it. So you have to look into those kinds of things when you think about exhibiting work and you think about those relationships with galleries so overall i think online exhibitions have merit i also think juried shows have merit i know that some juried shows have no financial cost to them for submissions others do and i know people will say well that you know i don't really want to pay to submit my work 100% okay, but sometimes calls for art, like we talked about earlier, come with competitions and they come with awards and they come with prizes. And often those submissions, the financial submissions come in are what's pulled together to give away those awards. So if you think your work is good enough, then perhaps you'll get money back or you'll get a lot of money back. You never know. But that's one of the reasons why those calls for art ask for a submission, a submission fee. Another reason is, is perhaps it's an art center. Maybe they're a non-for-profit and the submission fee helps them pay people to go through the submissions for them to hang the show, for them to spend the time and money to promote it and do all of that. So that's another thing. You gotta think about the community aspects of being a part of certain things. That's just kind of how it works. But every artist, every creative, every opportunity that you have to connect with the world with your art is going to need to be based on what feels comfortable for you. If you're like, I am not going to ever spend money to submit to anything, then you go with that. If you're like, I just show anywhere and everywhere and I don't care. I just want my work to just be out there and I'm willing to take risks and I'm willing to go into competitions and I'm willing to show at my local restaurant, tea shop, then do that. But you have to have your own journey. There's no right way or wrong way. There's no bad or good. An all online gallery isn't bad or good. Juried shows aren't bad or good. Relationships with galleries aren't bad or good. They're relative to what you want to experience in those relationships and how you want to build your career.