The Subtle Scam
Artists, beware of these "opportunities"
This week I got a message on LinkedIn from a gallery offering to project my artwork on a dome at a major art fair. Sure, sounds cool! But my Spidey scam senses were tingling, because the message said nothing about my work or where the gallerist had seen it, which meant this invitation had likely been sent blind to thousands of artists. So I started digging through the gallery’s website, eventually unearthing the expected nugget of dung. The “invitation” was for me to submit jpegs of 30 of my paintings to be projected for five minutes total, for which I would pay $5,000. Want ten minutes? They’ll give you a deal, only $9,500. BRB, gotta retrieve my eyeballs from where they rolled across the floor.
“Artist opportunities” like this one abound. They’re not full-on scams like the ones where thieves try to get you to share your bank details or sell you a booth in a festival that doesn’t exist. Instead, they’re what I call scam-adjacent: models that are set up to extract value from artists while giving very little in return. Here are a few to look out for.
Contests
Art contests can be appealing for several reasons – they’re usually free to enter and they offer the possibility of winning prizes and getting your work seen by big brands. But most of them are a bad deal for artists, for several reasons: a) because artists must often create new work to fit the contest theme, b) because the odds of being chosen are terrible, and c) because in many cases, artists sign away the rights to their artwork when they enter.
My friend Maki Naro brilliantly summed up the hazards of art contests and other types of “spec work” in this comic. Click through and read the whole thing, it’s worth your time.
A caveat: although contests sponsored by big brands are worthless for most artists, smaller contests for specific types of art, where the organizers give cash awards and prominently feature many of the entries, can be great. And some major contests, like Wildlife Photographer of the Year and Nikon Small World, are truly prestigious. My advice for artists: read the contest terms carefully, think hard before producing new work just for a contest entry, and check online to see if previous winners have been properly credited and promoted.
Feature Articles
There’s a well-known company that produces free feature articles about artists and other creative people. Sounds great, right? The catch: You do the whole thing yourself. They send you a standard set of questions and publish your answers verbatim, along with some images of your work. Besides the lack of editing, the real problem here is that they don’t distribute or promote the articles at all - they expect artists to send them to their email lists and post them on social media. In other words, the model relies entirely on artists to create both the content and the audience for it, while the publisher collects the clicks and sells the email addresses. And that, my friends, is a pretty lousy deal.
The “Prestigious Collector” Grift
Playing on the fantasy that an esteemed collector will see your artwork and be bowled over by it, this little scamlet is breathtaking in its audacity. Artists are invited to apply for the opportunity to have their work collected by a famous art collector. One example: artists pay $50 to enter three pieces, creating a pool of entries from which the collector will purchase a piece with a value of up to $10,000 for his collection. In other words, 200 poor people pitch in to buy a painting for a rich guy. This works out for exactly two people out of 201 – the collector, who gets a free painting, and one artist who essentially wins a lottery. Just say no.
Pay-to-Play Galleries and Art Fairs
It’s tough to generalize about these types of opportunities, because there’s a huge spectrum here, from perfectly legit to deeply shady. The legitimate ones offer artists a chance to display and sell their work in exchange for upfront payment, as opposed to the traditional gallery model of commission on art sales. This can be a practical alternative for artists who are good at selling their own work, or who just want to get their art on a wall somewhere without running the gauntlet of rejections.
Where it gets murky: the many “galleries” with fancy names that invite unknown artists to exhibit with them, sometimes at a fair, often in another country. This is, of course, flattering to artists who don’t often get these kinds of opportunities. Several emails later, the artist accepts the invitation, at which point the gallery sends a bill for thousands of dollars in exhibition fees.
Beware, beware, of any invitation where they won’t tell you the costs upfront. When in doubt, ask explicitly what expenses the artist is expected to cover. A legitimate organization will have no problem telling you. One that avoids giving you a direct answer is a big red flag.
It’s tough out there for artists. It can be very hard to tell a legitimate opportunity from a shady money grab. If you get a message that sounds iffy or just too good to be true, ask around. Someone in your network probably has experience to share.
And now a word about me
Holiday events are coming! You can find my work at the following DC-area venues:
Glen Echo Holiday Show and Sale - I’ll have a small selection of watercolors, scarves and ties for sale at this show, which runs from November 23 - January 5
Dupont Circle Holiday Pop-up - I’ll be there Saturday, December 7 only
District Bridges Holly Jolly Holiday Market - December 14, Logan Circle
As always, if you can’t make it in person, you can shop online
And for writers - vanity presses.