This is such a great post. To answer your question, more and more I am not paying to enter art shows. So many of them are just not worth it. I set a budget for application fees and try to stick to it. This year I ended up paying $100 to be in a show. Guess how much I earned selling art there: $10. That was the only show I paid to participate in this year. I blew my entire application fee budget on one lousy show.

Last Friday was the deadline for a well-known Chicago art show that has a (notorious) $50 entry fee. I decided, once again, not to enter it. I entered it a few years ago and was not accepted, and was very angry about the $50 I wasted. What’s worse, the entry fee doesn’t even cover the cost of attending the show’s grand opening. Tickets are more than $50! Such a waste. I’m happy to say that despite my rules about not paying more than $100 per year to enter shows, I have still have numerous opportunities to show my work at different venues over the past few years. I just have to be strong enough not to yield to the temptation to enter “prestigious” shows with fees.

This definitely resonated with me. It can be so difficult to sort out honest charges from those of ‘vanity galleries’. I agree with Tiffany that having a personal budget is a great idea & from personal experience recommend reaching out to the hosts and addressing questions & concerns. That will always give the artist a better idea of what/who they are supporting, where their cash is going & what they can expect as far as what they gain whether it be profit or experience.

I have no problem paying fees that I know are honest or going to events or galleries that clearly show the charge is fair & going to support the arts, but completely avoid outlandish charges that offer nothing but risk. Its a jungle out there. Excellent post.

As a practising artist and a retired gallery-owner-director [who handled work from ninety-nine local and national painters and sculptors over a 13 year period] this is my view on ‘applicatiuon fees’ ‘hanging fees’ and the like: if a private gallery cannot make its business pay by charging only a commission on sales, it has no business being in business – if you get my drift. If a public gallery, a festival, or a charity event organisation cannot make do with the funds provided to it by the taxpayers or donors then it should go crawl under a rock. Before an ongoing health condition forced me to retire from gallery business, which was a lot of fun, my gallery stuck to the traditional 33 percent of sale price achieved. Horrified was my reaction to the 50-60 percent plus ‘hanging fee’ charged by city galleries world-wide now. It’s simply greed, I think. But galleries know we artists will always make art, as publishers know we’ll always write or make music. So just keep on keeping on folks. And keep your day jobs. Cheers, Dorothy

I agree! I have decided to no longer enter competitions, shows, etc that charge to enter. I have felt for quite a few years that everyone is making money except for the artist! Unfortunately as artists are starting out it sounds like a good idea, so that will still continue to happen. Now there are some that say the art gallery scene is changing, and this is where it’s heading, but I sure hope not. I guess I am hopeful that people will see my work and appreciate it and want it, if I can just get it in front of them! Greta

I have given a lot of thought to entering competitions and juried showes, but I have always gotten a hinky feeling whenever I read about those “application fees”.

After reading this article and the commentary that followed, I have a feeling my instincts were more spot-on than I had thought.

Thanks for sharing this.

The comments show that us artists are at best uneasy and at worse fed up with the situation. It seems to reflect a shift in attitude here in the U.K where uncultured money grabbing is ordinary and almost to be expected in most walks of life now.
Sure there are lots of different types of galleries out there, from ultra commercial galleries which are really just ‘posh’ shops to the ones which receive public funding who should really think hard about what exactly they are doing. Are they really saying to us ‘we have the power, tough luck out there, guys we want to make money, your art efforts are just a mere commodity’?

I disagree. Application fees pay for administration. In business you pay for advertising hoping to get something out of it. Sometimes you do, sometimes you don’t. Sometimes you keep up ads because visibility can be ‘cumulative’. Some studies show that people don’t act until they’ve seen an ad x number of times. If you feel like you’re slaving away in the studio for nothing, believe me, you’re not alone. But nobody is going to do you any favors in this world. The record companies didn’t think the Beatles could make it in the US (?!). Even keen observers often can’t tell whether or not an artists vision will catch fire. Every art gallery and promoter would love to say that they discovered or ‘broke’ some fantastic new talent and give them preferential treatment but that’s not the way it happens. Rich kids with daddy’s many connections get treated differently but the public is well aware of the pretense. In the meantime we have to pay.

Well, duhh….fees are the most cost effective and profitable way to CENSOR art thru status quo institutions. There is a culture war art is a part of. This is divide and conquer.

Keeping artistic standards high is done by screening the art, not by people paying the fee. It just limits the entrants to those who can afford, not the art that they would even like to show. It’s biases the competition from the outset.

Great post and to the point.

Regrettably the vast majority of art competitions are a waste of time, a license to print money and nothing but a sham. I too wrote post about my disgust at the way these shows are organized and curated.

Personally I don’t think that integrity or upholding quality have ever passed through the minds of these idiot organisers.

http://www.swarez.co.uk/art-blog/art-business/art-competitions-and-exhibitions/

Submission fees are inherently exploitive of artists. Fee-based juried shows operate much like a protection racket. They extract money from vulnerable artists with limited resources and a strong desire for validation and transfer it to administrators who are not able to promote their galleries and exhibitions sufficiently well to patrons, audiences and funders to make a go of it without artist fees. Instead, artists subsidize administrators for shows that don’t clear the market. Here’s a radical idea, why not pay artists to apply, or at least pay finalists in selection processes for their effort. In the alternative, far better to find channels for promoting your own work and to band together with other artists to mount provocative, satisfying and renumerative shows.

Please see Canada’s CARFAC.
Outside of a commercial gallery an artist should be paid to show work.

Yes, totally.

Not only this, but a community center run show now requires all those tedious, frustrating things too. I felt it was about supporting the local artists, but after all the effort and not hearing anything, I feel like they in the end caved in to the bigger wigs of the scene and possibly shoved aside those who cannot afford the big shows.

I don’t even bother with anything above a $60 table fee, as I make a max of $100 generally but less in the past couple years. Things just don’t sell well anymore, likely due to my main art demographic at fan conventions being drowned in student debts and high living costs.

There was a fantasy-themed faire/event that was supposed to be Christmas-themed or such that had the nerve to charge $200 for a table with no ads or marketing outside their little facebook page and horribly-made website that itself was hard to find. The idea was exciting, but I has so many reservations, especially that no prices were listed online. I asked an artist who paid this fee on site about the costs.

Worse yet was that indeed, the event seemed a real dud. I saw nobody really there, and those artists got severely ripped off. I hoped they asked for a refund. I wanted to believe in it, but, I just couldn’t shake how sketchy the site was: the title included artwork belonging to Ciruelo, a dragon artist (you likely seen his work on his own wall calendars, they still publish).

Also, if “you teach others how to treat you” is honestly true, than, certainly free art shows are teaching the public that art is just some silly thing that people do that don’t have any realistic life goals. Some seem to think we should do it all for nothing, and that they are entitled to our work at no cost. Hard to look realistic when nobody respects us, but doesn’t that start with changing the way people see art and artists? At very least, have all shows by donation, and not simply “free”. Make it noted that there are costs associated to create and to display.

A great article. Thank you! I have been frustrated of what I call “Art scammers.” It’s enough that artists pay the material high costs. They also have to pay to have their works looked at. What I came to believe is that those galleries already have a list of participating artists which they know from personal contacts. The calls for submissions are only their ticket to free profits. they need to collect maney to finance their already selected artists shows, and they do this from struggling artists who are desperate for their talent and hard work to reach the public. Do they really care about real art or artists? definitely no. They are greedy businesses looking for easy money.

I have applied for what I thought fair bodies like Ontario Society of Artists for example, only to receive an email after they already had their show, that sorry due to high number of applications, I was not in. Another application I did, and had a similar experience with the delayed response, when I googled the exhibition, I learned that the show was actually organizes and curated by a university professor for his students and all the participants were his students, the whole class. Why would that gallery post a general call for submission, with submission fees to be paid,on Toronto Arts Council opportunities website in if this is the case?

I was not exhibiting for some years because I was busy with having and raising children. It was free to apply and exhibit. When my children became at school and I was able to paint and exhibit again, I was shocked by this big scam of submission fees. Despite my shock, I did apply and paid for many exhibitions at the beginning, but got into non. As a mater of fact, all the exhibition that I was able to had also submission fees, but I was a member there, and as a member who pays membership fees, you are entitled to participate. That’s the only way to guarantee being in shows: Become a member and pay fee.

I came across this post because this has always been in my mind, and felt like a rip off to me, and I hope if a law would come to stop this and make it illegal, because it is masked stealing. I specifically googles this subject and found this, I have just paid a submission fee to an art gallery in NY, It’s $50 US, but came to $75 CAN after exchange. I’ve already decided not to pay submission fees outside memberships, but though to try this one since they always post. Also, you would think that Toronto Art Council would post fair submissions, but they are all waist of time to go through, as all of them require fees. Some are even fake.

Have anyone heard of Agora gallery (Chelsea Int. Art Competition)?, It’s Liquid? Contemporary Venice and the like? I made a payment once and thank God the payment didn’t go through. They kept calling me for a year prompting me to pay. They claimed they were calling from Italy. I knew they were a scam from the amount of calls and emails. Why were they so desperate for my participation or payment otherwise?