I recently came across a flashy “art prize” that, in the fine print, asks artists to transfer all the rights to the artwork and intellectual property to the corporation. Yikes.

In a few weeks, I’ll post infographics on art competition odds on Temporary Art Review. It will be focused on the odds—the number of applications compared to number of awards—only. My interest is in providing quantifiable comparisons to help artists decide which competition to apply to.

I’ve undertaken some of the additional labor created by open calls as a juror and administrative assistant, so I’m not inclined to dig into the books of juried exhibitions. If that’s something that interests you, the data I publish might be a good springboard for you to calculate the income derived from particular calls, though it’d be up to you to research the overhead and expenses. The porous nature of Bay Area art media is what makes it exciting and unique to me, so I think you’d be able to find a platform for such an analysis.

I actually think the organizations that routinely practice this kind of model could use a little shame, or perhaps better put: accountability.

I personally would like to see a statistical analysis of the business of fee based juried shows. Who stands to gain what?

The true value, way beyond the paycheck, is in seeing an attendee on the brink of achieving something really amazing take a leap forward because they now have skills it may have taken them years, if ever, to achieve. That’s valuable for the participants and what makes it worthwhile to teach.

So yes, bad workshops are bad. Agreed. But not all workshops are bad.

You see, these often costly seminars (and I’m not saying yours is like this) that cater toward artists and their artistic careers, like the portfolio workshops, and marketing workshops tend to prey on individual artists who might possibly be at a crossroads and might possibly be looking for a formula for making a living through art. They are advertised as affordable, because it’s undeniably less costly than school, but in the end the value does not balance out. And they are led by artists who might simply be seeking more ways to increase their own revenue, and who really aren’t actually qualified to dispense advice.

But this isn’t to say that what you have done with the fee-based juried show isn’t spot-on. I have been tempted more times than one to write back with a similar reply. One, because that money adds up for an artist, and his/her bottom line. Two, the overall quality of the shows in the end is pretty low, in my opinion. If a jury is selecting from a pool of entrants in which the only common denominator is an entry fee, or perhaps another arbitrary criteria, like area or demographic, the result is a mish-mash. And I only say this as an artist who has entered these competitions only to see my work in the shows and say “well, that was a waste of $40, this is a really boring show, and the boringness of this show makes my work sink to this boring level, not the other way around like I had hoped”.

Makes me wonder why so many of these juried shows exist. Can the revenue stream from fee-based juried competitions outweigh, say, an institutional grant, or a sales-based exhibition? The individual selected to jury the show gets a fee, but is the fee that big? Some of these juried shows collect, in the end, tens of thousands of dollars.

Perhaps the impetus for these shows though, is the glaringly obvious reality that there are more artists, probably inexperienced ones, seeking venues than there are institutional funding and commercial sales, and there will always be people wanting to exploit that.

PS. why redact the names of these competitions? seems like it would benefit the public to know who these institutions are.

And I think you might know Joseph DelPesco and the posters he made which touch on these themes.