ArtPrize Blog
July 30th, 2009
Tomorrow, July 31 at midnight is the deadline for Artists and Venues to complete registration, including payment.
After tomorrow there are two weeks for venues to secure registered artists. Deadline: August 15. (What happens to artists that don’t finish registration? See the bottom of this post.)
ARTISTS
Complete registration by paying your registration fee and uploading a proposed work on the website. (The work itself does not need to be complete until the event starts.) Finish registration here.
VENUES
Keep in mind, that after the registration fee is paid, a venue still has to be physically inspected and approved. Any venue that registers in the next 24 hours should plan on securing a very manageable number of artists. The time to send and receive Hosting Agreements after being approved will be very short. Be sure you know the Final Step (see below). Register here.
Know the Final Step!
You have two weeks (until August 15) to complete Hosting Agreements. Having a Hosting Agreement signed by both artist and venue is NOT the final step. ArtPrize still needs to know you reached an agreement. How you let us know is:
1. Artist/Venue sign the Hosting Agreement
2. Venue clicks “Secure artist” on artprize.org
3. Artist clicks “Secure venue” on artprize.org
FINISHED
What happens to all artists that have not finished registration?
Artists who began the registration process, but did not pay the fee by July 31, will still keep their online account. However, they will not be able to edit that account, nor secure a venue. Artists that have completed their profile and paid by July 31 can still edit their profile while they search for a venue. Artists that secure a venue by August 15 can continue to tweak their profile, while those that do not have a venue cannot.
When registration opens for ArtPrize 2010, those artist accounts that have been on “lockdown” because they either never finished 2009 registration, or never secured a venue, will be open to edit again.
July 28th, 2009
This Friday, July 31, is the registration deadline. Saturday, August 15 is the matching deadline. There’s been a bit of confusion about exactly what these deadlines mean, and what will change on ArtPrize.org when they pass.
July 31: Registration Deadline
By midnight, July 31, artists and venues must complete the registration process. For artists, this means:
- Creating an artist profile
- Adding a “work” (providing details about what you propose to show)
- Uploading images (images of the work, renderings of a proposed work, and/or images of similar past work)
- Paying the $50 registration fee
For venues this means:
- Creating a basic account
- Adding a venue or venues (providing details about the space you are providing)
- Uploading images of your venue(s)
- Paying the $100 registration fee (one fee per venue)
As long as you have paid the fee by July 31, you can still go back and edit the other aspects of your profile later, if need be. Venues that wait until the last minute to pay will probably not be approved before July 31, and that’s ok.
August 15: Matching Deadline
By midnight, August 15, artists must have secured a venue in order to be entered in the ArtPrize competition. This process requires two steps, one happens offline, and the other happens online. Once an artist and a venue agree to work together, they need to both sign a Hosting Agreement offline (What is the Hosting Agreement?). Once they have done that, they need to take the final step and “secure” one another on ArtPrize.org (for more info, read The Final Step).
Because the final step is what needs to happen by August 15, those waiting until the last minute to negotiate and sign Hosting Agreements run the risk of not being able to secure the connection on the website, which would disqualify the artist from competition. This is very important! Venues, you may want to set a goal to have all completed Hosting Agreements in hand by August 10, just to make sure any confusion with the securing process can be resolved in time.
What happens when deadlines are missed?
Artists and venues that do not pay the registration fee by July 31 will no longer be able to edit their account details, and will not be able to match with one another. Artists and venues that have not matched by August 15 will not be entered in ArtPrize, and will no longer be able to edit their accounts. All accounts that are deactivated in these ways can still be used as the basis for creating a voting account for the event. Also, when registration opens for ArtPrize 2010, the accounts will be reactivated, and the original data will be preserved.
July 24th, 2009
What a way to end the week. We just passed 300 artists with space secured for ArtPrize. Not bad considering we passed the 200 mark earlier this week. Take into account the fact the it took 11 days to go from 100 to 200, and that means that the rate at which artists are securing venues has more than doubled in the past week. We’ve been urging venues to start drawing up Hosting Agreements with their selected artists, and it is happening. As the list of secured artists grows on the site, we’re able to watch the event begin to take shape.
If you’re an artist and you’re not among those 300, it’s not too late. July 31 is the registration deadline, so don’t delay. Clearly, many venues are no longer waiting to secure artists, and there’s even a growing list of venues that are full. If you’ve already registered, the deadline to secure a venue is August 15.
Venues: Once you’re done securing artists, you should start thinking about programming during the event. Are you going to host a reception for your artists? A gallery talk? What are other venues in your area doing? We’ll provide more ideas along these lines in the coming weeks.
July 24th, 2009
July 31 is the deadline for Artists and Venues to complete registration.
ARTISTS
Complete registration by paying your registration fee and uploading a proposed work on the website. (The work itself does not need to be complete until the event starts.)
Finish registration here
VENUES
Keep in mind, that after the registration fee is paid, a venue still has to be physically inspected and approved. This means that venues registering on July 31 will be approved in early August. For any venue planning to bring in more than just a few artists, that two week window to complete matching (Aug 1-15) is going to be hectic–to put it mildly. Be prepared to adjust your plans accordingly.
MATCHING
For all registered artists and venues, August 1-15 is your window to complete Hosting Agreements and click “Secure” on the website, so that ArtPrize knows you’ve reached an agreement. After August 15, no more artists will be secured.
Know the Final Step!
Having a Hosting Agreement signed by both artist and venue is NOT the final step. ArtPrize still needs to know you reached an agreement. How you let us know is:
1. Artist/Venue sign the Hosting Agreement
2. Venue clicks “Secure artist” on artprize.org
3. Artist clicks “Secure venue” on artprize.org
FINISHED
July 23rd, 2009
At the beginning of this summer, we spent a lot of time trying to explain the strange idea and rules for ArtPrize. Apparently, somewhere along the way, people started to get it. As of this post there are over 113 venues and since the beginning of the week we’ve seen over 25 artists a day securing space. It’s growing a bit faster than I expected.
One expectation I had going into ArtPrize was that only a relatively small group of people would be interested in going to the trouble to exhibit art. This is not to say that exhibiting art is boring, but when asking the average person what they’d most like to do this year, they’ll probably say, “Go to Hawaii.”
I assumed it would be largely artists and people active in the art world who would jump at the chance to open a venue. While that is true, with 113 venues and counting, there are many more people who apparently have a latent desire to not only see art, but meet artists and help them exhibit their work. Read More »
July 22nd, 2009
Considering over 50 artists have secured venues in the two days since we hit 200, the following message is clearly not for everyone. For a few venues and artists out there who do not know…
THE FINAL STEP
Artists & Venues have until midnight, August 15, to complete the offline/online process of securing space
OFFLINE
Artist & Venue complete and sign a Hosting Agreement
ONLINE
Venue clicks “Secure artist” on artprize.org
Artist clicks “Secure venue” on artprize.org
FINISHED
Artist will appear on the artist list as “Connected”
July 21st, 2009
There are a couple of misconceptions about registration fees floating out there. ArtPrize has a $50 fee for artists and $100 fee for venues to register.
Misconception 1: The fees pay for the prize money
I’m not sure where this started, but I’ve heard it from a few artists. There is a total of $449,000 in prize money that will go to the top 10 finalists for ArtPrize. Some people have been watching to see how many artists and venues sign up to see if it will reach $449,000. The thought being, if not enough artists and venues register, the prize money will drop.
This is not true. The prize money is secure. It is a donation from the DeVos family and was in place the day Rick DeVos announced the idea for ArtPrize on April 23.
Where does the registration fee go? It helps to offset the costs of things like having a full-time artist relations manager or volunteer coordinator doing things like finding places for artists to stay for cheap or for free. The expense of putting on the event and building the website easily eclipses the registration fee revenue, which is where donors step in.
Misconception 2: The fee guarantees a spot in a venue
Some artists paid the $50 registration fee believing that was the only step to securing space within a venue. At a film festival like Sundance, the registration fee does not mean your film will be shown. Over 6,000 filmmakers register each year with only 250 slots to fill (short films pay $50, feature films $75). However, maybe this idea spread because of ArtPrize’s unusual entry process.
There is no official ArtPrize curator or jury selecting artists. It’s unusual, but does not mean artists enter on a pay-to-play basis. It just means selecting art work is totally decentralized and spread out over a hundred venues with wildly divergent tastes and experience. (In a strange twist, I’ve heard that one or two venues are solely accepting artists based on a rental fee, which is a variation on pay-to-play with a dash of pure capitalism.)
For anyone still bristling at the registration fee, let’s crunch the numbers.
Say 10 artists a day secure venues for the next 25 days–the average daily rate of the last two weeks–until the August 15 deadline. 250 artists plus the 222 secured at the time of this post makes 472 total. Let’s make it a more conservative number: 400.
Now, say 1,600 artists who began registration finish and pay the registration fee by July 31 (a huge increase from our current daily average).
Based on a high estimate of artists who complete registration and a low estimate of artists that secure a venue, ArtPrize artists have a 1-in-4 chance of showing their work. (Actual numbers will probably be closer to 1-in-3.)
A filmmaker paying the registration fee for Sundance: 1-in-24 chance.
Certainly, Sundance is 30 years old and well established. But, purely from an investment point of view, out of the events operating on the scale of ArtPrize, a 1-in-4 or 1-in-3 chance of getting a return on your registation fee is not so bad.
July 20th, 2009
May 29, the ability for artists and venues to match went live.
June 4, just under a week later, the first three artists secured a venue.
June 12, a little over a week later, 10 artists had secured venues.
July 9, four weeks later, we hit the 100 artists mark.
Today, eleven days since the 100 artists mark, we hit the 200 artists mark.
The trickle has become a bonafide flow and guess what? Artists are looking for a place to stay. Will you open your house to an out-of-town artist?
Host an out-of-town artist
You can volunteer to become a House Host for an artist. Open up your home for as little as a weekend or four weeks. “Four weeks?” you ask. Yes, a handful of artists will be building and installing work here in Grand Rapids well before the start of ArtPrize on September 23. Check out the sign up form and decide. (Artists will not be able to see your name and address when browsing through the list of homes.)
Volunteer to help at the event
You can, of course, volunteer to help at the event itself. Just fill out the form here. Our coordinator, Kathy Wildt, is looking for about 1,000 volunteers (Whew!). She’s looking to fill two hour shifts with friendly faces and you will get a T-shirt.
July 20th, 2009
Many artists are in The Waiting Game, wondering when and if they’ll hear back from a venue. So, the question on most of their minds is, “What are venues doing right now?”
I’ve been asking the same thing, in more precise questions, to venues over the last week. In short, many of them are inundated with requests. More than a few report they spend 10-20 hours a week working on ArtPrize. A good portion are just getting ramped up and feel overwhelmed by the amount of artist requests, much less the prospect of diving into over 1,600 artists available on the website. We have volunteers waiting in the wings to help them if they need it. Read More »
July 17th, 2009
Do you have a favorite artist or two coming to ArtPrize? Download their “badge” from our Facebook fan page.
In Facebook, you can download this badge and “gift” it to your Facebook friends using the Get Flair app. Of course, you can upload the image to your blog, Flickr, Twitter–wherever you play online.
These badges have only been made for artists that secured a venue. It’s our little gift, so artists and their friends can promote online. There is a vote coming up and, like most elections, the candidates get a badge. If an artist wants to redesign it (put his/her face in the middle, add venue name, whatever) feel free.
We’ll update the album of badges weekly with newly connected artists.
