Artist online portfolio: why it matters and how to set one up

Someone asks you to "send me some of your work" — a gallerist, a collector, a journalist, another artist recommending you to someone. What you send in that moment is, in practice, your introduction. If it's a handful of loose photos over WhatsApp, no technique, no dimensions, no price, that person has to reconstruct the rest themselves. Most won't.

An online portfolio solves exactly that moment: one link, always current, that anyone can open without asking you for anything else.

How it's different from Instagram

Instagram is a chronological feed: whatever you posted last covers up everything before it, and a piece from two years ago stays buried unless someone scrolls a long way. It also doesn't show dimensions, technique or price in any consistent way — that lives in the caption, if you wrote one.

A portfolio is a fixed, ordered view of your whole catalogue, with each work's details right next to it. It doesn't compete with Instagram — it complements it: Instagram sparks the first interest, the portfolio is where that interest turns into something concrete — an inquiry, a sale, an invitation to show.

What it shows

Once you turn your portfolio on in Artium, the public page pulls together:

• Your photo, name and bio (whatever you filled in under My profile).
• Your signature, if you uploaded one — it also shows up on your documents, on every plan.
• Each published work, with technique, year, dimensions and price if you chose to show it.
• A "Sold" tag on works no longer available, if you turned that on.
• Your social links and website, if you added them.

None of this is written twice — it comes straight from the inventory you already keep in Artium.

How to turn it on

1. Go to Portfolio in the menu (right next to Artworks).
2. Turn on Portfolio visible.
3. Pick your link — the part that goes after artium-inventory.com/u/. No spaces or accents; if you leave it blank, Artium suggests one from your name.
4. Decide whether to show sold works or not.
5. Save.

That's it — it's published. Your photo, bio and social links are edited separately, under My profile — the portfolio pulls them from there automatically.

How to share it

From the same Portfolio page, the Share button opens everything at once: a ready-to-paste message, direct buttons for WhatsApp, Telegram, X, LinkedIn and Instagram, and a QR code with its own download. On a phone, that same button opens the system's native share sheet — one tap and you pick who.

The QR is for everything that happens off-screen: stick it on an exhibition wall label, print it on a card, put it at the bottom of a dossier. Whoever scans it lands directly on your work, no need for you to be there to send the link.

Showing price and sold works: your call

Neither one turns on by itself. Showing the price helps someone decide without having to ask, but some artists prefer "price on request" and negotiate privately — both are valid. Showing sold works builds social proof (it reassures people that others have already bought), but if you'd rather your portfolio read as pure availability, leave it off. You can flip either setting whenever you want.

The most common mistake: an empty portfolio

Turning the portfolio on before you've loaded any work is worse than not having one — the link you send opens onto an empty page. Load at least five or six representative pieces before you start sharing it. It doesn't need to be your whole catalogue: a few well-documented works beat many with missing details.

Whatever you decide: turn it on today, even if nobody's asked yet. The day someone writes "send me some of your work," the answer will be a link, not half an hour digging for photos.