Jenny Grant Art in her studio.

In 2022, I attempted a big goal to grow my art business and increase my opportunities. 

I set out the year with a goal to send in 100 applications to art opportunities. As I have every year for the last ten years since I graduated from undergrad, I tracked my artist fellowship, art jobs, art grant, artist residency, and exhibition applications in a simple spreadsheet.

If you haven't already checked out Artwork Archive's Guide to the Best Opportunities in 2023, you can find the free guide here, and try a project like this for yourself. You can also favorite and save deadlines right in your Artwork Archive schedule, so that you can stay on top of applications. 

Despite eventually falling short of my goal of 100, I learned which applications were worth investing in and which opportunities were best to apply. Here's what else I learned from this experiment.

 

Applying to more art opportunities did not necessarily increase the acceptance rate, but it did net more opportunities.

To get an idea of what this experiment yielded, let's take a look at some numbers.

I applied to 61 opportunities by the end of January 2022, and as of this writing, I have received 21 acceptances, 29 rejections, and 1 waitlist placement. Twice my applications were lost by the recipient, so they never had the opportunity to accept or reject me, and I am still waiting to hear back from 8 opportunities. That means my acceptance rate was 42% for the year based just on the 50 applications from which I got a response.

For comparison’s sake, let’s look at 2021’s numbers. In 2021, I sent in 20 applications total and received 11 rejections, one waitlist placement, and eight acceptances. The annual acceptance rate excluding waitlist placement? Still, 42%.

Since I’ve kept meticulous records about each of the applications, and what it cost me, I ran the numbers for previous years as well. (I have excluded 2020 since so many of the opportunities were then canceled due to COVID-19). In 2019, there was a total of 11 applications, with two acceptances, nine rejections, and an 18% acceptance rate. In 2018, there was a total of 25 applications, six acceptances, one waitlist placement, 18 rejections, and a 25% acceptance rate. In 2017, there was a total of 28 applications, with nine acceptances, 21 rejections, and a 32% acceptance rate.

From these numbers, we can draw a lot of conclusions. The years I applied for more opportunities do generally correlate with the years my acceptance was 25% or higher—so we could conclude simply that more is more.

The math supports this—for example, it is more likely someone will earn an A in a class with more graded assignments. Indeed, this was my logic when I decided to try to apply to 100 art opportunities. But, what changed between 2018’s acceptance rate of 25% from 25 applications to 2021’s 42% acceptance rate from just 20 applications?

To get a better visualization of these numbers over the years and how the volume of applications affected the acceptance rate, we made a few graphs to chart the progress. 

Did I become a better artist? Probably not significantly in just three years.

What did happen is that I became a smarter applicant.

I became more capable of picking the right opportunities for my career goals. Here’s how you can get better at selecting opportunities for yourself.

Personal connections still mattered the most in gaining opportunities.

Much of the time, artists are applying to be considered for awards by people they have never met. Whenever you can, applying for opportunities in your network assures a greater likelihood of success. Not only will it be easier logistically to show your art locally, but the gallerist who you see at monthly exhibition openings is more likely to open your email because they recognize your name. People want to work with and help people they already know and like.

Of course, it’s not always possible or desirable to stay within your established network—perhaps the whole reason for your application to have a solo show in France is that you have never been to France. If this is what you desire for yourself, you should absolutely apply for these bigger leap opportunities, knowing that they are often the most difficult to secure.

Absent from my application tracking are opportunities that I was presented with, but to which I did not need to apply. These opportunities—speaking to a colleague’s college class about my art practice, participating in a group show, and interviewing the director of a regional museum—all came from my network. These opportunities and professional engagements were offered based on the quality of the work I had completed previously and through connections.

The longer you work as an artist, the more these kinds of opportunities will overtake the ones to which you have to apply, provided you invest your time in networking. Speaking with an artist-friend who is in her eighth decade of life and her fifth decade as an artist, she confessed she no longer applies to anything at all; the network she has cultivated in her hometown of Washington, D.C. offers her what she needs to have a career and to begin planning her legacy.

Here’s how you can become better at networking.

 

Opportunities that were a good match in the past will likely continue to be a good match in future years.

It makes sense that an opportunity that I felt was a good match for my work in previous years will still be relevant and worth applying to at another time for me. I don’t expect that my work or the kinds of opportunities that best support my work will change drastically from year to year.

Artists should expect to apply multiple times to big art grants and artist fellowships but consider for yourself if you want to take a year or two off from an especially complex or financially burdensome application. Likely, it will still exist for you to apply to further down the road. Some organizations even limit how frequently you can apply; MacDowell, for example, only accepts one application per person every two years.

Tip: You can keep track of your art exhibitions and include which artworks you submitted, as well as which works were accepted or even won an award in Artwork Archive. That way, you can go back and see which opportunities were successful in previous years and keep track of which artworks in particular are getting accepted or acknowledged. 

 

Use extreme discretion when applying to opportunities with an application fee.

Currently, the ongoing debate in the art application world is the ethics of charging a fee for applications to opportunities. Every artist I’ve spoken to agrees that either all applications should be free or that a nominal fee to pay jurors is fair. No one is in favor of fees above $25, but some are okay with the model Skowhegan and others are employing—offering a free or low rate for the first week and then charging procrastinators more money to apply right before the deadline.

Reviewing my records of the fees over the last ten years indicates that application fees have decreased or declined slightly with the pandemic, probably because of the public outcry.

In 2022, I spent $600 on application fees, the most I’ve ever spent by quite a bit (in 2021 I spent $232, in 2019 it was $100, in 2018 I spent $285 and in 2017 it was $372).

Since I planned to apply to 100 opportunities in 2022, I budgeted for this large number—but in reviewing the year, it’s clear that I was rejected from most opportunities that charged $25 or more and that most of my acceptances came from opportunities that were $0-$15 to apply. Generally, of legitimate opportunities, residencies and exhibitions hosted by museums have the highest fees. There are also a lot of scams that charge high entry fees.

Here’s how you can get better at spotting opportunity scams designed to take your money.

• Check the fee-to-award ratio (it should be a low entry fee to award fee). 
• Research the organization and look for a page of past winners
• Be aware of vanity galleries and vanity publications. These organizations will change you a fee to exhibit or to have your work in their publication. They are not worth the money and are not legitimate opportunities to bolster your career.

In 2023, I’m sticking to a budget of $200 for application fees, which means I can apply for 13 opportunities that cost around $15 and the rest can’t have an application fee.

I recommend all artists come up with a budget they’re comfortable with for fees. Your budget will naturally limit how many applications you can submit.

Tip: In the Guide to the Best Artist Opportunities in 2023, you can filter the opportunities by "free to apply" at the top of the page. 

Good planning and budgeting of your time will only benefit you in the long run.

Another trend I noticed from reviewing the past five years of my opportunity spreadsheets is that when I had a large opportunity from the previous year already planned—in 2022 it was a solo show I was awarded in early 2021—I tapered off my applications earlier in the year. As a working artist who also freelances and works as an adjunct college art professor, I knew I would not have time to prepare work for multiple solo shows, so I didn’t apply for more exhibitions in 2021.

Taking on more than you can reasonably do if accepted helps no one and will likely stress you out.

This year, I have a solo show and a summer artist residency already scheduled, so I know I cannot apply for any more of these kinds of opportunities this year and still meet my other work commitments. Instead, I am focusing on research grant applications that, if awarded, will seed the next body of work. Then in the fall, I will prepare for residency and show applications for 2024’s opportunities and set myself up for the year ahead once more.

Ready to find the perfect opportunity for your art business?

Each year, the Artwork Archive team sets out to find and curate the best artist opportunities for the year. You can search artist residencies, artist grants, fellowships, calls-for-entry, and more in the free Guide to the Best Opportunities in 2023. 

Find out how you can grow your art career by finding the right opportunities to apply for in 2023. Then, if you want more guidance on how to put together a competitive application, download the guide below all about landing grants and funding for artists. 

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Suzy Kopf is a multidisciplinary artist, college educator and arts writer. She has been an invited speaker on career development topics at the College Art Association, The CUE Art Foundation, Artists Thrive Conference, and the Maryland State Art Council, among others. She is a regular contributing writer for BmoreArt, as well as Baltimore Magazine, Johns Hopkins Magazine and the Baltimore Museum of Art and specializes in profiles on creatives, art business practice and exhibition reviews. Her work has been shown throughout the US and Canada and she has been the recipient of numerous residency fellowships including Kala, The Studios at Mass MoCA, Playa and VCCA.