5 Golden Rules for Applying to Art Opportunities

Applying to art opportunities can feel like throwing your work into the void—countless hours spent preparing, only to face silence or rejection. But here’s the truth: most artists fail at open calls—not because their work isn’t good enough, but because they’re chasing the wrong opportunities. Opportunities that are either out of their reach or won’t bring them anywhere they want, wasting time, energy, and resources. As a result, in this article, we’ll walk you through 5 golden rules for applying to art opportunities—from residencies and grants to exhibitions and art prizes.

Feel free to use this article as a free checklist to help you decide what to apply for and what to avoid. These rules are designed to help you step away from the scattershot approach and start applying with clarity and intention. Hopefully, this guide will help you shift from rejection to recognition by applying smarter as an artist. It’s about finding the right open calls for you—the ones aligned with your work, your career level, and your goals.

So, if you’re ready to stop applying blindly and do this instead, let’s dive in.

1. Niche Down

Applying to an open call with no restrictions at all is, statistically speaking, a recipe for disaster for new emerging artists. If all artists working in all artistic disciplines across the entire world are eligible for the open call, the number of artists participating in it will be problematically high, reducing your statistical chance of being selected. Instead, niche down based on your artistic discipline, geographical location, or subject matter.

Think of open calls specifically for sculpture—which is a lot less competitive than awards for painting as there are significantly more painters—or open calls for residents of your country, state, or city only, or art opportunities that focus on a specific subject such as landscape painting, art and technology, or female photographers, et cetera. Go for open calls that share your vision so there is a natural match between you and the organizer. Niche down and automatically increase your statistical chances of being selected.

2. Start Small

As a new emerging artist, one must focus on entry-level art opportunities first. Please do not waste any time, effort, or resources applying for art opportunities out of your reach because your resume and perhaps your art are not ready. For instance, if you are a new emerging artist and you have exhibited with just a couple of small galleries, do not apply to renowned art opportunities such as the Marcel Duchamp Prize, the Future Generation Art Prize, the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Hugo Boss Prize, or the Turner Prize. Instead, try to start small and work your way up. Climb the ladder of success, but do it step by step. If you are unsure of the level of the open call, you can analyze the level and competition by checking the past winners or selected artists and see if they align with your current level.

You can do this by comparing their resume with yours or consulting Artsy.net or Artfacts.net. If they are on Artsy, they are serious new emerging artists. If they are not, they are relatively unknown. Or, if they are on Artsy and have notable career facts on the right-hand side of their page, they are more established, have surpassed the level of a new emerging artist, and might be out of your reach. If you use Artfacts, a ranking of the top 1,000,000 is within reach of all artists. A top 100,000 ranking means they are serious new emerging artists working on a decent level. From a top 10,000 ranking, they can be seen as mid-career artists who have surpassed the level of an emerging artist. The top 1,000 and above are true established artists.

Other factors that can help to identify the level of the art opportunity are the cash prize, the institution or collective organizing the opportunity, the jury, or the venue of the opportunity. So if the cash prize is above $10,000, the organizer is a well-known institution, the jury consists of renowned art world figures such as established artists or famous curators and museum directors, and the venue is high-end, the opportunity will also be of a high level. Know your level and understand to which weight class you currently belong. Be realistic and accept your reality, but do not underestimate yourself or let the climb be discouraging. Rome was not built in a day, and as soon as you have your first selections or prizes, it will get easier and more rewarding with every single step.

3. Avoid Vanity Art Opportunities

However, starting small does not mean one has to start with the most unknown art opportunities they can find. Because in the end, if they have nothing to do with the art world, they are rather irrelevant and most often a waste of time and money. Especially when we are dealing with vanity art opportunities—a rather problematic phenomenon that has emerged quite aggressively over the past five years. Vanity art opportunities present themselves as legitimate art opportunities but are not only isolated from the art world but also aim to make money off hard-working artists looking to build their careers through application fees. So try to avoid these vanity art opportunities at all times.

Arguably, the best way to avoid them is by focusing on art opportunities with an actual physical venue—meaning there is a physical studio with residencies, a physical exhibition space for exhibition open calls, and a physical award show or exhibition of the selected artists or finalists in the case of an art award. If that is not the case and everything is happening online, then it is all just smoke and mirrors, not a real opportunity, but only an opportunistic endeavor by some people behind a computer that has nothing to do with the art world, profiting on application fees without giving artists any credibility or the exposure they talk about on their about pages. In most cases, these open calls are vanity opportunities.

Furthermore, if the art opportunity has a long-standing history of past winners who became established artists after their participation, the organization and jury are clearly doing a great job and have actual influence on the laureates’ future careers. As briefly discussed above, the jury panel can also be an indicator of whether the art opportunity is worth it or not. If the opportunity has established artists or influential art world figures in their jury, the open call will be most meaningful, trustworthy, authoritative, and respected. And, of course, the art opportunity will be meaningful when it is organized or hosted by a respected art world entity—think of a public institution, a government institution, a renowned art magazine, an art foundation, or even an art magazine or gallery. On the other hand, avoid art contests hosted by an online blog, Instagram page, or, in some cases, an unknown online art magazine. If you look closer at these types of organizers, you will notice that we often deal with a vanity art opportunity once more.

4. Avoid Excessive Financial Pressure

Art opportunities can be an essential way to boost your resume, get seen by the art world, and connect with new entities of the art world network. However, it should never be pursued at all costs. Art opportunities are competitive, rejection plays a tremendous part in it, and even when seeing some successes, this does not automatically result in a return on your investment—at least not in the short term. So, if you have limited financial resources, be smart when pursuing art opportunities and focus on the art opportunities that genuinely support artists by removing financial pressure from the artist.

For instance, an application fee is standard with art opportunities. However, the very best art prizes are free of charge or have a relatively low application fee as the government, a patron of the arts, or a public institution funds them. Furthermore, if you are searching for artist residencies, make sure they cover your accommodation and travel expenses, provide the studio space free of charge, and preferably have a production budget to work with. If that is not the case and you can afford to pay for it yourself, that is fine, too. But if you can’t, don’t go all in just yet and wait for a better opportunity. Your mental and financial health will thank you for it.

Furthermore, artists working in cost-intensive disciplines, such as installation or monumental sculpture, are advised to find funding via art opportunities and, in the meantime, work on a smaller scale or creatively explore less costly variations of their work to demonstrate their talent and support their applications. Don’t wait for the money to arrive; actively look for the money you need with art opportunities while simultaneously investing in your oeuvre.

5. Use Artenda To Browse & Apply Consistently

Arguably one of the most important factors to be successful with art opportunities is knowing where to find them and browsing and applying to them consistently. As always, artenda.net is our number-one recommendation for art opportunities. They streamline this entire process by compiling numerous high-quality opportunities in their database and allowing you to use personal filters to, for instance, niche down in your search for competitions, awards, residencies, or grants. This will result in a very comprehensive overview of open calls that might be right for you, providing the necessary additional information to make an informed decision if the open call is right for you or not, including an overview of the previous winners, the organization, the eligibility conditions, the application fee, the rewards or what the residency offers, and more.

Artenda does come with a very modest monthly subscription fee, but it saves you so much time when browsing for open calls and money by allowing you to find the right ones and avoid hefty application fees. For this reason, it is a small but powerful investment that will make up for it rather quickly—and if you are not convinced of its usefulness, you can try it yourself for 30 days, totally free of charge. I believe one of its best features is its optional tri-monthly newsletter that sends you all the best open calls in the foreseeable future based on your personal recommendations. So instead of having to remind yourself to browse the internet a couple of hours in search for some open calls that suit you, you can automatically receive them in your mailbox three times per month. This feature is key to applying consistently, and it is arguably the most important thing to see actual success in the long run.

For these reasons, Artenda is the fifth and final golden rule in our list—our top recommendation, and a partner in truly empowering artists to navigate the art world and kickstart their career. Apply smarter, not harder.

Discover Artenda here.

Last Updated on April 15, 2025