Dear Art Exhibit Venue,
We need to talk.
I heard you were having a juried exhibit. I was happy to hear it and after reading over
your prospectus I thought about entering my work. These things are always tricky to figure
out. I read about the juror(s) you
selected and the cash awards you were offering.
I checked the dates on my calendar and compared those dates to the other
exhibits I had already scheduled. I
looked to see what work I had available to show during that time and carefully
considered how your juror(s) might respond to that work. As you know, I make a lot of 3D work so I
also checked over your size/weight limitations and thought about how I might
get my work to you if it happened to be selected.
I’ll be honest, I also thought carefully about your entry
fee. Knowing that there would certainly
be significant costs on my end if my work was selected, I had to consider if
those costs would be justified. Let’s
say I pay your $30 - $50 entry fee just to have 1 – 3 of my pieces
considered. If those pieces are
rejected, I’ve lost the entry fee and nothing more. If any of the entered work is accepted I will
then need to either deliver the work to your space or have FedEx do that for
me. If I deliver it, there’s the
terrible cost of gas and the distance to your venue from my home to
consider. There may also be a big loss
of my time again depending on where you are in relation to me. And while FedEx is my preferred delivery
service (other than me) they are not in the habit of delivering work or
insuring that work for free. The bottom
line is that one sculpture getting accepted is going to cost at least $50 in
delivery. Those upper echelon venues
only make me pay to deliver and they generously cover the cost of the return
shipment, but you, well, you ask that the artists cover the cost of delivery
and return shipment. That’s another $50
minimum. So we’re looking at $150 from
my wallet in a best case scenario.
That led me to consider your prizes and awards. I know you say I’ll get all sorts of fame and
publicity just from being in your show. You
say it’s the biggest show in town and you get tons of humans to move through
your space to see my work. That could be
good for me. And yes, my work will be
for sale so there’s always the chance that someone would want to buy it. And if that happens, I’ll forget all about
that $100 (since I wont have to spend the extra $50 for return shipment…unless
I prepaid return shipping through FedEx in advance). But the truth is, I’ve been getting in these
shows for a long time now and that fame and publicity you promise hasn’t really
made me famous or well publicized. In
fact, you’ve downright broken that publicity promise quite a few times. What about those prizes you offer? Well, they sound good, but they’re almost
like the lottery, right? Especially
those BIG, “life changing” award amounts some of you advertise. I cant exactly count on winning the lottery
so I have to be realistic and think I could just lose between $30 and $150 if I
enter into this relationship.
Listen, you know I need you.
You know I need to get my work out into galleries where people can see
it. You know I need to have my work
validated by my peers for professional purposes. And you know I can’t resist even the
slightest possibility that I could win that big prize and become an overnight
sensation. So if you create the exhibit
and you dangle that carrot, you know I and many of my friends will likely
enter. Hopefully it comes as no surprise
to you that you’re not the only one for me.
There are between 6 and 10 others each year. That puts those costs closer to $1,000 for me
each year. I’m not gonna lie to you, it
makes me wonder if your venue is worth it.
I mean, is your town really an arts destination town?
All this makes me begin to think about how you treat
me. This is what it really comes down to
isn’t it? You may have a small gallery
in a small town but if you’re very nice and very professional, I’m going to
stick with you. You may have prestige
and name recognition, but if you treat me poorly and act like my work doesn’t
matter, I’m going to be done with you pretty quickly.
You gave me pretty strict instructions in your
prospectus. You want me to be
professional. You want me to enter by
following a very specific set of instructions and you want me to do it by a
certain deadline. You expect my artwork
to be excellent quality and you expect that I’ll deliver it to you by another
set deadline. You want me to come back
again for the reception and then again to pick up the work after the exhibit
closes. And you expect me to be on time
for each of those appointments and to have my own materials for packing and
moving. And you know what? I think that’s fair. I think those are very reasonable
expectations for you to have of any artist.
But here’s where we went wrong: I have expectations too.
When you said I could deliver my artwork at that very specific
time, I expected you would be there to receive it. I understand that life happens and maybe
something came up, but for three, four years in a row? Come on now.
That lunch break happens at pretty much the same time every day doesn’t
it? But if you couldn’t be there for
some reason I expected that you would either let me know well in advance or
that you would leave some very specific instructions for another venue employee
to handle the receiving of the artwork.
I know we talked about the money I’ve invested in this exhibit but we
haven’t even touched on the money I’ve invested in this particular work of
art. This is, after all, an art
object. It is quite valuable, especially
to me. I spent days, weeks making this
thing and spent hundreds of dollars on the materials and now I’m handing it
over to a “volunteer” or some other person who appears to have never touched a
work of art before. This kind soul makes
it clear they had no idea they’d be handling art today. Do I need to sign something saying I
delivered it in perfect condition? No
one knows. Will it make it safely into
the exhibition? I certainly don’t know
and this leaves me feeling very uneasy about you. If I had a nickel for every time this has
happened, I’d have a LOT of nickels. Seriously,
there are venues where artists have running jokes about the staff never being
on time or even showing up for appointments.
When you said you were an art venue, I expected you were
being honest about that. You said this
was the biggest thing in the region and that people from all over would come to
see it. You said the work would be on
exhibit for the public. You didn’t
mention that the exhibit space was literally a wall or shelf in a local
business. At least you didn’t mention it
until my work was accepted. You expect
professional quality art but you want to exhibit it over a table at a
restaurant? That really makes me
reconsider that entry fee. Oh and I’ll
need to coordinate the delivery, exhibit, return of my work and the contract
with that local business? Are you
kidding me? I’m sure you were thinking
it was fine and that nothing could go wrong.
Surely no customers would touch the weird sculpture with sauces on their
little 5 year old hands. There’s no way
it would get dropped or scratched or lost while being handled by the restaurant
owners, right? Lucky for me it wasn’t
dropped or scratched. It did however get
lost. For about a week no one at the
restaurant seemed to know what I was talking about when I asked why my
sculpture wasn’t returned on the date stated on the contract. “Sculpture?
What sculpture? Oh, that
thing? I haven’t seen that in a week or
so. I think the artist came and got
it.” Also lucky for me you had at least
one competent employee working for your event who immediately made it her job
to find the sculpture and return it to me.
It had been dropped in a box and shoved under a shelf in the
kitchen. Nice. Well on your way to becoming a world class
exhibition!
In these types of juried exhibits the artists are putting
themselves out there to be judged and categorized by the quality of their
work. I wonder what would happen if you
were to be judged and categorized by the quality of your work?
In our relationship, if I fail to live up to reasonable
expectations, you toss out my entry and keep my money. You may even reserve the right to stake an
ownership claim on my work if I don’t pick it up on time…it says so in the
contract. But what happens when you fail
to live up to reasonable expectations?
We will stop entering your shows. And when our artist friends forward the email
and ask if we are entering, we will feel obligated to tell them why we wont be
signing up for more abuse this year.
Your reputation as a respectable venue will suffer. Will other, younger/emerging artists enter to
take our place? Maybe so but unless you
change your ways, they’ll be ready to wash their hands of you soon too.
Its not that I want to end our relationship. You do have some good qualities. But you need to know that there are lots of
up and coming venues, some of which are being steered by working artists who
are very familiar with these types of relationships from both sides. They’re treating me really nice and even
respecting my artwork. Heck, they not
only show up at the designated time, they offer to help carry the artwork. They care about more than just their gallery
or their job (or their lunch break). They care about the
artists and the artwork.
Maybe there’s still time to save this thing. Really all I want is to be treated fairly
and for you to have some respect for my artwork. And as a gallery, museum or exhibition space
shouldn’t that already be one of your goals?
So if you see my entry next time, you’re probably doing it
right or at least I’ve heard you’ve really changed. If not, I’ll put all your tshirts and albums
in a box and you can pick them up later.
