How to promote an art exhibition

The show is up, the labels are straight and the wine is cold. And on opening day you realise the announcement went out three days ago, in an Instagram story that lasted twenty-four hours.

In this guide we look at what to send and when, how to give the show a place of its own online, and what to do after it closes, which is exactly when most people stop working the exhibition.

How early should I start?

Three weeks before the opening, at the very least. A schedule that works:

Three weeks before. The main announcement: title, venue, dates, opening time and one strong image. It goes to your contact list, the local press and your social media.
One week before. The reminder, with a different work from the announcement. It is the message most people end up reading.
The day before, or on the day. A short note to the people who said they would come. Nothing more.

If the venue promotes too, ask for their dates and coordinate. Two announcements on the same day step on each other; two announcements a week apart reinforce each other.

What should the announcement say?

What someone needs in order to go, in this order:

Your name and the title of the show.
Where. Venue, address and city. If the place is hard to find, how to get there.
When. The date and time of the opening, and until when it can be visited, with days and hours.
One image. A single work, well photographed. Not a collage.
Two or three lines about the show. What people will see, not the full curatorial text.
A link where everything else lives.

That last point is the one that is almost always missing, and it is the one that does the most work.

Why does the show need its own page?

Because messages get lost and links stay.

An Instagram story lasts a day. An email sinks in the inbox. A page with the show (title, dates, venue, the works with their details), on the other hand, can be forwarded, put behind a QR and looked at again the following week. It is what someone opens when a friend tells them "you have to go and see this".

It also serves the people who can't come: someone in another city still sees the show, and if a work interests them, they write to you.

How do I set it up with Artium?

In Exhibitions you create the show with its title, venue, city, category (solo, group or residency) and dates, and pick which works go in. The Exhibition public page section sits on the same screen:

Your portfolio has to be published: the show's page hangs off it. If you haven't turned it on yet, the portfolio guide covers it in five minutes.
Choose the Exhibition link, the last part of the address. It ends up like this: artium-inventory.com/u/your-name/exposicion/the-coast-in-winter.
Turn on Exhibition visible.
Decide whether to Show prices. For an institutional show, leave it off.

The page shows the title, venue, dates and every work with its details. Tapping an image shows it large. Unlike the portfolio, sold works always appear here: the page is the record of what hung in the room, not a list of what is still available.

Share gives you a ready-made message, buttons for WhatsApp and social media, and the QR. Copy link grabs just the address to paste into an email or the announcement.

What do I do on opening night?

Three things, and none of them is "be on your phone":

Put the QR in the room. On the room sheet, on a sign at the entrance or on the wall labels. In Artium, the label QR can lead to each work's record or to the exhibition page.
Ask someone to take photos. Of the room with people in it, not just of the works. Those photos end up worth more than any studio shot.
Write down who asked about which work. On paper, on your phone, anywhere. It is the most valuable list you take home that night.

And afterwards, once it has closed?

This is where much of what the show can give you is won or lost.

Upload the event photos. In Artium, every exhibition has an Event gallery: with Add photos you upload the opening and install shots, and they appear on the show's public page. The page stops being an announcement and becomes the record of what happened.

Write to whoever asked. That week, not three months later. A short message with the link to the work they liked.

Say thank you. To the venue, the curator, whoever helped you install. With a photo of the full room, if you have one.

Put it in your CV. Once the closing date passes, Artium moves the show to Finished and keeps it with its dates, venue and category. The line in your CV comes straight out of it, in the right section.

What should I use?

Instagram and an email can promote a show well. What you don't get is a fixed place for it: when it ends, everything you put together scatters across posts and conversations.

Your own website gives you that place, but every show is a new page to design, fill in and maintain, with the works' details copied over once again.

With Artium the show's page comes from the same data you used for the labels: the works, dimensions and prices are already there. It is free, on every plan, and the show stays filed in your record once it is over.

Artium was put together inside a studio, between one show and the next. If this guide helped, the app does the repetitive part so you can take care of the room.

Whatever you use: set up the link before you send the first announcement. Everything else points to it.