Art Marketing Secrets

Artists seeking to develop a website to showcase their work have many options. Website designers offer a range of solutions ranging from simple template-based sites to fully customized designs built entirely around the persona of the artist and their work. Understanding the benefits of each option is important, as the art marketplace is highly competitive.

The latest issue of Art Calendar (newsstand edition) has a series of great articles on building and maintaining your online art presence. Gay Jervey gives some excellent tips on achieving successful results with high-quality art websites.

Galleries and other Arts professionals do search for work on the internet so it makes sense to do as much as possible to help them find you. If you perform an online search on your name, even if your website is poorly optimized there is a good chance that your site will show in the results. But remember – if a gallery hasn’t heard of you, how would they know to search on your name?

Technique #6 – Advertise in Art Industry Publications If you are willing to spend a little money, you can promote yourself by advertising in art (or other) industry publications. Good examples are “ARTnews” and “Art In America”, which have large, worldwide circulations and are mainly read by collectors, dealers and professionals in the trade. You [...]

Technique #5 – List Your Art In Online Registries & Art Directories There are several online art registries where you can submit samples of your work including images, artist statements, bios, etc. Registries are used by museum and gallery curators when they are looking for new work. Think of them as the central libraries of [...]

Technique #3 – Use an Automated Email Management System We all like to think that our query letters will arrive like silver bullets in the perfect gallery and bring us instant fame and success. … The same applies to galleries and other arts professionals: They may not be ready for new work when you first present yourself, but at some point they will be looking.

Galleries are quickly becoming much more comfortable with operating on the internet. Most have their own websites so it makes sense that they are willing to work with you online. A very useful approach to a gallery is to email them to request their submission guidelines for new work.

Arts professionals are visually oriented people. So, by all means sweet talk them with eloquent words – but don’t forget to bowl them over with a beautiful piece of your work too.

For many artists, the primary purpose of their website is to attract the attention of art galleries and dealers. A well designed website showcasing quality art will get the attention of arts professionals when they see it. But how do they find you in the first place?

I came across a post dissecting some gallery designs at AFC’s Best Dressed List which I think is worth reading. Personally Bitforms has one of my favorite gallery designs. The AFC grand prix goes to Sikkema Jenkins & Co whose site design by Kyung Jeon is virtually flawless. The design is simple, elegant and versatile, (meaning, you could upload the picture you took of the floor by accident and it would still look artful). Straight forward and easy to navigate this sight sets itself apart from a great many gallery sites.