How to get your art into a gallery

Start with fit, not with a list

The fastest way to waste a year is to email fifty galleries the same message. Every gallery has a program, a sense of what it shows and why, and most rejections are about fit rather than quality.

Before you contact anyone, spend time with the places you are considering:

• Look at three or four past exhibitions. Is your work in conversation with what they show, in medium, scale, subject or approach?
• Check the type. An artist-run centre, a municipal gallery and a commercial dealer all choose artists differently. Our guide to types of art galleries explains each one.
• Check the career stage. A gallery showing artists with museum retrospectives is not the right first stop for an artist two years out of school.
• Go in person. Visit openings, sign the guest book, pick up the exhibition text. Browse by city in our gallery directory, for example galleries in Toronto.

Make a short list of five to ten realistic places and learn them well.

Build the record galleries look for

Curators and dealers rarely take on an artist with no public history. The record usually starts in places that accept submissions:

• Artist-run centres. Most choose exhibitions through open calls; in a 2011 survey for the Canada Council, 96% of responding centres said they use them. Find them in our list of artist-run centres in Canada.
• Municipal galleries. City-run spaces often hold juried calls. Montréal, for example, lets professional artists propose exhibitions to its Maisons de la culture free of charge throughout the year.
• Juried group shows and festivals. A good way to get work in front of jurors and other artists. Read our guide to open calls and the red flags first.
• Grants and residencies. A Canada Council or provincial arts council grant, or a residency, tells a gallery that your peers have reviewed your work.

How dealers actually find artists

Commercial galleries receive far more unsolicited submissions than they can read, and many say plainly on their websites that they do not accept them. In practice, dealers tend to find artists through people and places they already trust:

• recommendations from artists they represent, curators, collectors and other dealers
• exhibitions at artist-run centres, public galleries and university galleries
• graduating shows from art schools and MFA programs
• art fairs, open studios and group shows
• an artist’s website and social media, usually after hearing the name somewhere else first

The practical lesson: your best introduction is your work in public, plus relationships built over time. Go to openings, support other artists, and let people see what you do.

Submission etiquette by gallery type

The proposal package

When a gallery does invite submissions, most ask for some version of this:

1. A short cover letter or email. Who you are, what you are proposing, and why this gallery. Three short paragraphs at most.
2. A project description. What the exhibition would be, what it needs (space, equipment, time), and its status. Often 300 to 500 words.
3. An artist statement. See how to write an artist statement.
4. A CV. See our artist CV template. Grant bodies often cap it; the Ontario Arts Council’s visual artist creation grants allow a three-page résumé.
5. Images or video. Follow the limit exactly. The same Ontario grant allows eight images or eight minutes of video. Use clean, well-lit photographs of finished work, and name files consistently.
6. An image list. Number, title, year, medium, dimensions, and a one-line note if the work needs context.
7. A link to your website, if you have one that is up to date.

Send digital files only, never originals, unless the call asks for physical work.

Following up

If the call gives a notification date, wait for it. For an unsolicited enquiry to a commercial gallery, one polite follow-up after four to six weeks is reasonable. If there is still no reply, take it as a no and move on without resentment; dealers remember artists who are gracious.

A rejection is not permanent. Programming committees change, and many artists are accepted on a second or third try with a stronger proposal. Keep a simple log of where you applied, when, and what you sent.

When you are accepted, get the terms in writing before you hand over work: dates, fees or commission, insurance, shipping, installation and return. Our guides to what galleries pay artists and consignment agreements list what to check.

Common mistakes

• Mass emails with every gallery’s address visible in the “to” line.
• Proposing to a gallery whose program you have never looked at.
• Sending thirty images when the call asks for ten, or dark phone photos of framed work under glass.
• Writing a statement full of theory and adjectives instead of a clear account of the work.
• Pricing work differently in your studio and at the gallery.
• Paying a gallery to exhibit. A dealer earns money by selling your work, not by charging you. See how to spot a vanity gallery.
• Signing nothing, or signing on opening night without reading.

A note for US readers: the process is much the same. Many US calls run through the CaFÉ platform, and the US has more commercial galleries and fewer publicly funded artist-run spaces, so juried shows and non-profit spaces carry more of the early-career load.