How to propose a show

Pitch a show to a venue — what to write, what to attach, and what happens after you send it.

Anybody with an account can propose a show. There is no fee and nothing to be invited to. The link is on each venue’s page and on its card in the list of venues — “ProposeShow” — and it opens the form on the venue you were looking at. Afterwards, the “My Proposals” section on your own “Me” page is where you find everything you have sent and what became of it.
You need an artist profile first, and if you have not got one you are sent to make it and brought straight back. It is not paperwork: a panel reading a proposal wants to know whose it is, and that page is the answer. You are recorded as the show’s curator.
Pick the venue. Each one has its own panel and its own idea of what it is looking for, so a proposal goes to one place — sending the same idea to two venues is two proposals.
Pick the venue first and the rules appear under it — read them there. They are the hard part: what the gallery will and will not do, what a curator takes on, and what it costs. You tick to say you have read them, once, and a proposal cannot be sent until you have — and what you agreed to is kept with the proposal, so later edits to the rules do not change it.
Then say what kind of show it is, because it decides what the rest of the form asks you. “A show I would put together” means you choose the artists and name them further down. “An open call” means anybody may submit and you select from what comes in. Neither is ticked for you — it is a real decision, and the same boxes underneath mean different things depending on which you pick.
Say how many artists the show would have — for an open call, how many you would end up selecting — and how many of them are early in their career. If the venue asks for more than you have put — 120710 asks for twelve artists, four of them emerging — you are told plainly and can send it anyway. It is not a refusal: the panel reads it either way and weighs it.
Give it a working title and a line or two that would go on the website if it happened. The title can change; something to call it while we talk about it is enough.
Then the pitch itself. “What the show is” is the one part that has to be filled in — the idea, what a visitor would see, why it hangs together. The rest is optional and all of it helps: the artists you would include, what it would need from the gallery, and why this space in particular.
Artists come in two halves. Anybody with a profile on this site is picked from a list — start typing a name — and the panel gets a link straight to their page, which is a large part of what it is reading. Anybody without one is typed into the box below it; an artist in a show may never have heard of this gallery, so there is no requirement that they have an account.
Say where the artists stand, in that box: agreed, likely, or a wish. All three are useful and only one of them is a promise, and a panel would rather know which. On an open call both halves ask instead for anybody you already have in mind — optional, and not a shortlist, because the call is open to everybody.
If you are not doing it alone, say so under “Other curators”: start typing and it finds anybody with a profile on this site. They will be able to read the proposal, and it stays yours to edit. Somebody who has not got a profile needs an account and one before they can be named — ask them to sign up and they will appear in the list. Every curator of a show here has one, which is why there is no box to type a name into.
An open call is asked one thing more: how you would choose. Who would read the entries and what they would be looking for — names are not needed, how it would be decided is. What it would cost to enter, when it would close and who would jury it are not asked here: the gallery sets those if it accepts the proposal.
Dates are a preference, not a claim on the calendar. Put the run you would want, and use “other dates that would work” for what else you could do — a proposal that can move is easier to say yes to.
Pictures and links are on the form itself, near the bottom: choose as many pictures as you like — example works, a reference, a sketch of the hang — and fill in up to three links. Both are optional, and both add to whatever is already attached rather than replacing it. If the form comes back with something to fix, the browser lets go of the files you chose, so pick them again before saving.
Once it is started, the proposal’s own page does what the form cannot: press + on the row of pictures or drop files straight onto it, caption each one — an example of the work, a reference and a drawing of the room are three different arguments and look alike in a grid — credit anything that is not yours, and add a fourth link and a fifth.
Drag a picture to move it. The order is saved as you let go, and it is the order the panel reads them in, so put the one that makes the case first. “Slideshow” at the top of the row shows them full screen.
Links go under “More to read”, and there is no limit on the page: a PDF of the full proposal, an artist’s portfolio, a video of work that has to move to be understood, a floor plan. Give each one a name — “The full proposal, 18 pages” — because a list of six web addresses tells a panel nothing about which to open.
Each one takes either a link or an attached PDF. Use the attachment when the document does not already live somewhere you can link to — a proposal you wrote for this, rather than a portfolio that is already on a website. PDFs only, up to 50 MB; photographs go in the pictures row instead, where they can be captioned and put in order.
Check each link opens for somebody who is not signed in as you. A document left private is the commonest way this goes wrong: nobody asks you to share it, they just find a locked door and read the rest without it.
Pictures are not published anywhere, but they are not secret either: a file’s own web address works for anybody who has it. Do not attach work somebody has asked you to keep private.
Keep editing for as long as you like. Nothing is read until you send it, and a half-written proposal sitting there is not shown to the gallery as anything to chase.
When it is ready, “Send it in”. It joins the pile for the next sitting, and a copy of the link arrives in your email. Sending does not end your editing: proposals are read together about once a month, and you can keep changing yours until the panel picks that pile up — you are written to when that happens, and from then it is fixed, because what they score has to be what everybody else’s is scored against.
You can withdraw it at any point, before or after sending. Nothing is deleted, you can still read what you sent, and you can propose again whenever you like.
You will hear back with a decision and, where there is something useful to say, a note about it. Scores are never shown — not to you and not to the other proposers.