Key Takeaways
- A strong call for artists states the theme, eligibility, deadline, fees, selection criteria, and terms in plain language before anyone applies.
- Collect every submission through one form or platform, so that images, statements, and contact details arrive in the same format.
- Score work against published criteria, using a simple scale and independent first-round reviews, before the jury meets to discuss it.
- Treat applicant data with care, and tell artists how long you will keep it and who will see it.
- The open call does not end at selection. Record applicants properly, follow up with the shortlist, and keep notes that help you work with those artists again.
An open call can bring a gallery work it would never have found through studio visits or art fairs. It can also bury a small team under hundreds of emails, half-finished forms, and image files named after camera defaults. The difference between those two outcomes usually comes down to planning. A clear call, a single route for submissions, a fair scoring process, and a plan for what happens after selection make an open call manageable and worth repeating.
This guide covers how to write a call for artists, how to handle a large volume of entries, how to jury and score work fairly, what to look for in submission software, and how to turn applicants into relationships that last beyond a single exhibition.
What Is a Call for Artists?
A call for artists, also known as an open call or a call for entries, is a public invitation for artists to submit work for consideration. Galleries use them for group exhibitions, prizes, residencies, commissions, art fair presentations, and online shows. Some calls are open to anyone, while others are limited by region, career stage, medium, or theme.
For a gallery, an open call is partly a curatorial exercise and partly a public promise. Artists invest time, and sometimes money, in applying. How you write, run, and close the call shapes your reputation with the wider artist community long after the exhibition comes down.
How to Write a Call for Artists for Your Gallery
The best calls answer an artist’s questions before they think to ask them. If applicants need to email you to find out the size limit or whether you take commissions, the call is incomplete, and your inbox will show it.
What to Include in the Call
- Title and summary: name the opportunity and describe it in two or three sentences.
- Theme or brief: explain what you are looking for, with enough detail to guide artists without dictating the work.
- Eligibility: location, age or career stage, media accepted, and whether previously exhibited work is allowed.
- What artists receive: exhibition dates, venue, any fee or prize, promotion, and sales support.
- Submission requirements: the number of images, file format and size, artist statement length, CV, and artwork details such as title, medium, dimensions, and price.
- Selection process: who sits on the jury, the criteria they will use, and when decisions will be announced.
- Key dates: the opening date, the deadline with time and time zone, the notification date, and delivery and collection dates.
- Costs and terms: any entry fee, commission on sales, insurance, shipping responsibilities, and image usage rights.
- Contact and access: a named contact address, and how artists can request adjustments or alternative formats.
Fees, Rights, and Terms
Entry fees are one of the most debated parts of open calls. Some galleries charge to cover administration and juror fees, but many artists see fees as a barrier, particularly when the chance of selection is small. If you charge, say exactly what the fee covers, keep it proportionate, and consider a waiver for artists on low incomes. If the call is free, say so prominently, because it is a genuine draw.
Be equally clear about rights. Copyright stays with the artist unless they agree otherwise, so the call should state how you will use submitted images, for example, to promote the exhibition, and ask for permission to do so. Set out the commission on sales, who insures work in transit and on the wall, and who pays for delivery and return. Vague terms are the most common source of disputes after selection.
How to Manage Hundreds of Open Call Submissions
Volume is manageable when every submission arrives in the same shape. Problems start when some artists email files, others send links to cloud folders, and a few post work to the gallery. Choose one route for entries and politely decline the rest.
- Use a single submission form or platform that asks every artist for the same fields and enforces file limits.
- Ask artists to name image files consistently (e.g., surname, title, and year), or use a platform that renames them on upload.
- Send an automatic confirmation when an entry arrives, so artists do not need to chase you.
- Give each entry a reference number and track its status: received, eligible, shortlisted, selected, or declined.
- Run an eligibility check before judging starts, so jurors only see complete entries that meet the brief.
- Agree in advance who answers artist questions, and publish an FAQ to cut down on repeat queries.
For a large call, leave time between the deadline and the first jury meeting. A week spent checking eligibility, chasing missing details, and preparing the review set is rarely wasted.
How to Jury and Score Artist Submissions
Good jurying is consistent rather than complicated. Jurors should assess every entry against the same published criteria, using the same scale, before any group discussion takes place. That sequence stops the loudest voice in the room from deciding the result.
Most galleries use one of a handful of scoring approaches.
Whichever method you choose, ask jurors to write short notes alongside their scores. A sentence on why a piece stood out, or why it fell short of the brief, makes the final discussion faster and gives you something useful to say if an artist asks for feedback.
Reducing Bias in the Jury Room
Blind review, where names, CVs, and gallery representation are hidden during the first round, helps jurors judge the work rather than the reputation. A jury drawn from a range of backgrounds and perspectives does the same at a group level. It also helps to score independently before meeting, to vary the order in which entries are viewed, and to ask jurors to declare any conflict of interest, such as a personal or professional connection to an applicant.
Watch for groupthink in the final session. If the jury settles on a shortlist very quickly, ask each juror to make the case for one work that did not make it. Occasionally that changes the outcome. More often, it confirms the decision with better reasons.
Choosing Software for Open Calls and Artist Submissions
There is no single best tool for every gallery. The right choice depends on how many entries you expect, whether you charge a fee, how many jurors need access, and what you want to do with the information afterward.
Broadly, galleries choose between three options. Dedicated open call platforms, such as CaFÉ, Submittable, EntryThingy, CuratorSpace, and Artwork Archive’s call for entry tools, handle forms, file uploads, fees, and juror scoring in one place. General form builders, such as Jotform or Google Forms, are cheaper and flexible, but they leave scoring and file management to you. Some galleries simply use email, which works for a handful of entries and quickly breaks down beyond that.
When comparing options, check the following points.
- Whether the form can require specific fields, image counts, and file sizes.
- How entry fees are collected, and what the platform charges per entry.
- Whether jurors can score online and independently, with blind review if you want it.
- How easily you can export applicant data and images when the call closes.
- Where data is stored, how long it is kept, and whether the platform supports your obligations under UK GDPR or other data protection law.
- What the experience is like for artists, including on a phone.
The last point is often overlooked. A clumsy form costs you entries, especially from artists who are applying to several calls at once.
It is also worth thinking about where the information goes once the call closes. Submission platforms are built to collect and judge entries, not to manage an ongoing working relationship with an artist. The artists you select, and many of those you shortlist, belong in your gallery’s main records alongside your collectors, inventory, and exhibition history.
Turning Open Call Applicants Into Long-Term Artist Relationships
An open call is one of the few moments when a gallery hears directly from hundreds of artists at once. Treating it as a one-off event wastes that contact. The galleries that get the most from open calls are the ones that follow up deliberately.
- Tell every applicant the outcome: Let every artist know the result by the date you promised, including those who were not selected.
- Offer brief feedback: Where you can, share even a general note on what the strongest entries had in common.
- Add artists to your database: Record selected and shortlisted artists in your gallery database, with notes on their work, medium, and interests, rather than leaving them in a submissions spreadsheet.
- Grow your mailing list: With their consent, invite applicants to your mailing list for future calls, openings, and events.
- Track your shortlist: Keep a record of who was shortlisted, so you can revisit them for future exhibitions, art fairs, or commissions.
- Stay in touch: Keep up with selected artists after the show through studio visits, sales updates, and invitations to future projects.
A gallery management system is the natural home for this information. In Artlogic, contacts can be grouped, categorized by their interests, linked to related contacts, and added to contact lists for targeted mailings, while contact narratives keep a running record of conversations. When a selected artist’s work arrives for the exhibition, it can be recorded in the same system as the rest of your inventory, with images, documents, consignment terms, and location.
Consent matters here. Applying to an open call is not the same as agreeing to receive marketing. Ask applicants to opt in to future communications on the submission form, and keep only the data you need, for as long as your privacy notice says.
Common Open Call Mistakes to Avoid
Most problems with open calls are predictable, which means most of them can be prevented at the planning stage.
- Writing a theme that is too broad: A brief such as “new work by emerging artists” invites thousands of entries the jury cannot properly review, and leaves most applicants with little real chance of selection. A focused theme, clear limits on medium or size, and a realistic sense of how many works the space can hold produce a smaller, stronger field.
- Hiding the costs: Leaving fees, commission, or shipping costs unclear until after selection puts artists in an awkward position and is one of the most common sources of disputes. Publish every cost in the call itself, including who pays for delivery, return, and insurance, so artists can decide whether to apply with the full picture.
- Moving the goalposts: Changing the criteria or the timetable once the call is live is unfair to artists who have already applied on the original terms. If a change is unavoidable, explain it to everyone who has entered, and offer a refund to anyone who paid a fee and no longer wants to take part.
- Breaking the promise of blind review: If the call says the work comes first, jurors should not see names, CVs, or gallery representation in the first round. Set up your submission platform or review spreadsheet so this information stays hidden until the shortlist stage.
- Announcing before notifying: Artists who find out they were not selected from a social media post feel overlooked, and they tend to remember it. Tell every applicant the outcome first, then make the public announcement.
- Letting the shortlist disappear: Strong shortlisted artists are often lost because their details stay in a submissions spreadsheet nobody opens again. Moving them into your gallery’s main database, with notes on their work, keeps them in view for future exhibitions and art fairs.
Each of these mistakes costs trust. Artists talk to one another, and a call that felt disorganized or unfair will be remembered when the next one opens.
Measuring Whether Your Open Call Worked
The success of an open call is not only the exhibition it produces. Before you plan the next one, look back at a few simple measures.
- Entries and eligibility: Count the total number of entries and how many were complete and eligible. A high share of ineligible entries usually means the brief or the submission requirements were unclear, so treat it as feedback on the call rather than on the artists.
- Where applicants came from: Add a simple “How did you hear about this call?” question to the submission form. Comparing the answers with the quality of entries shows which channels, such as your mailing list, art schools, or listing sites, are worth using again.
- Staff and juror time: Track the hours spent from launch to final decision, including answering questions, checking eligibility, and jurying. This is the real cost of the call, and it tells you whether you need more help, a longer timetable, or better tools next time.
- Exhibition results: Record sales, visitor numbers, and press coverage for the resulting exhibition, and compare them with your regular program. An open call that brings in new collectors or press attention is doing more than filling a wall.
- Long-term relationships: Over the following year, note how many selected or shortlisted artists you went on to work with again, whether in another exhibition, an art fair presentation, or a commission. This is often the clearest sign that the call was worth running.
These figures help you decide whether to change the brief, adjust the fee, extend the deadline, or try different promotion next time. Keep the results alongside your artist and contact records, so the next call starts from evidence rather than memory.
Building an Open Call Artists Want to Enter Again
A well-run open call is clear before it opens, organized while it runs, and considerate in how it closes. Artists remember galleries that answered their questions, judged their work fairly, and told them the outcome on time. They also remember the ones that did not.
The work that follows selection matters just as much. Recording artists properly, keeping notes on your conversations, and staying in touch turn a single exhibition into the start of a working relationship.
Ready to bring your artists, contacts, and inventory into one place? Try Artlogic for free to see how gallery management works in practice, or book a call with the team to talk through your gallery’s needs.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long should an open call stay open?
Most calls run for four to eight weeks. That gives artists time to prepare and gives the gallery time to promote the call. Very short windows tend to favor artists who already have finished work and good images on hand.
Should a gallery charge an entry fee?
It depends on your costs and your audience. Fees can cover administration and juror time, but they discourage some artists from applying. If you charge, explain what the fee covers, keep it modest, and consider offering waivers.
How many images should artists submit?
Between three and ten images is common. Fewer images keep jurying manageable, while more give a fuller view of an artist’s practice. Ask for the number your jury will genuinely review.
What should happen to unsuccessful submissions?
Tell artists the outcome, then handle their data as your privacy notice states. Delete images and personal details you no longer need, and keep contact details only for artists who have agreed to hear from you.
How should a gallery promote a call for artists?
Start with your own website, mailing list, and social channels, then share the call with art schools, artist networks, listings sites, and regional arts organizations that suit your brief.
