Every year, thousands of freshly graduated artists leave art schools with a diploma in one hand and vague ideas about the future in the other. They know how to paint, sculpt, conceptualize, theorize. But nobody told them how to turn that into a career.
(And to be clear: “building a career” doesn’t mean “being young.” Many of us come to art through roundabout paths — after other careers, life transitions, long pauses. A beginning is a beginning, regardless of your birth year.)
Art academies produce excellent technicians and thoughtful creators — but curricula almost never include topics like: how to write a grant application, how to price your work, how to approach a gallery, how to build a network that will carry you through a decade.
The result? Generations of artists who believe the only legitimate path is waiting. Waiting to be noticed. Waiting for something to happen. Waiting as a strategy.
Except it isn’t a strategy. It’s hope dressed up as patience.
“Someone Will Discover You” Is a Myth
Recently, Artnet News published an article in which curators from institutions like the Queens Museum, Liverpool Biennial, and Julia Stoschek Foundation shared how they actually find new artists. The answers were surprisingly consistent — and entirely in line with what I’ve been telling clients for years.
Hitomi Iwasaki from the Queens Museum puts it plainly: “You can’t just sit in the studio and wait for someone to come and discover you. There’s no other way than going out, seeing things, and talking to peers to get recommended.”
The biggest source of new artists for curators isn’t galleries, isn’t algorithms, isn’t magical scouts roaming graduation shows with big budgets. It’s other artists. Peers. Networks built over years, in conversations after openings, at residencies, in shared studios.
This isn’t a secret. But it’s rarely said explicitly, especially not in academic contexts where there’s an implicit assumption that quality will find its way to an audience on its own.
It won’t. Or at least — not without your help.
Professionalism Isn’t a Dirty Word
In many art circles, there’s a discomfort around anything that sounds like “self-promotion” or — heaven forbid — “marketing.” As if talking about your work is somehow vulgar. As if real art should speak for itself.
The problem is that art doesn’t speak. You do. And the way you speak — through your website, portfolio, email to a curator, grant application — determines whether anyone hears you at all.
Lisa Long, who now runs Companion Culture, recently traveled to Tunisia and realized how difficult it was to get a sense of the local scene when artists didn’t have even a basic online presence. Instagram helps, but it’s not enough. A website remains the central place where everything can be seen — and where curators actually do their research.
Nora Lawrence from Storm King Art Center explains: “As a curator, there are so many things that come my way that presenting something more than a press release helps me get to the meat of things in a world where there are so many competing priorities for time and attention.”
What should that website contain? An artist statement. Press coverage if you have it. And — this is crucial — work organized in a way that shows development. Iwasaki says she looks for signs of evolution, direction, awareness of context. Even if someone has only been working for a few years, she wants to see where they’re going, not just where they’ve been.
Clarity Wins
One of the biggest issues I see with artists early in their careers is an inability to articulate their own work. I don’t mean pompous statements stuffed with theoretical jargon (“my practice interrogates the liminality between…”). I mean the simple ability to explain — to yourself and others — why you do what you do.
Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, curator of the upcoming São Paulo Biennial, says he receives countless portfolios and reviews them all. What draws him in? “Forms and ideas that frame the work as much as the histories and geographies the works align with.”
Lisa Long asks one question: “What captures the moment?”
This doesn’t mean work has to be explicitly political or topical. But there has to be a reason — and that reason needs to be clear to you before it can be clear to anyone else. “When I meet an artist, I can understand when they really believe in what they’re making and are fully behind it,” Long says. “That is something that I connect to very strongly.”
This authenticity — not in the buzzword sense, but as genuine rootedness in your own work — can’t be faked. But it can be developed. And it starts with the questions you ask yourself in the studio, long before anyone else sees your work.
Budgets Aren’t Boring
One of the most common surprises for artists applying to major opportunities for the first time is how much attention goes to things that have nothing to do with “art” in the narrow sense — budgets, timelines, logistics.
The Queens Museum has the Jerome Foundation Fellowship — a program offering $20,000, studio space, and a solo exhibition. Iwasaki runs the program and says something that should be framed on the wall of every art school: “If your proposal sucks, even if you have content and talent, that’s where you stop.”
What makes a good proposal? Beyond concept and CV, she wants to see evidence that the artist has thought about budgeting and realistic timelines. “I know it’s a lot to ask from an artist, but I think it is a requirement for an artist nowadays.”
This isn’t pedantry. It’s a professional competency that can be learned — but almost nobody teaches it.
Flexibility as a Professional Skill
Curators aren’t looking for finished packages. They’re looking for collaborators.
Nora Lawrence works with artists on monumental public pieces — for many, it’s their first time working in a new medium or at a new scale. “Occasionally you’ll find someone who jumps at the opportunity but then you start talking about practicalities or materials or things like that and they might need to think about them a bit more,” she says.
What encourages her most is “an affinity for the type of experimentation that is required to create work within a landscape.” In other words — a willingness to engage with the process, not just the outcome.
A career isn’t built on one big decision. It’s built on thousands of small adjustments. This might be the most important lesson that art schools don’t teach.
What This Means in Practice
All of this plays out differently depending on where you are — fewer institutions in some places, different market dynamics, varying levels of transparency. But the fundamental logic stays the same.
Networks are built actively, not passively. Websites need maintenance. Proposals need to be clear and realistic. And professionalism isn’t the opposite of creativity — it’s its precondition. Maybe even its best ally.
I’ve been thinking about this for a while now. And I’m working on something that might help. More on that soon.
In the meantime, if you see yourself in these paragraphs and aren’t sure whether we can help, you can chat with our assistant. Tell it what you need and it will give you an honest answer about whether — and how — we can help.
Your Perspective Matters
I’m currently conducting research on the challenges facing artists and cultural workers — from funding to digital presence, from pricing strategies to maintaining balance between creative work and everything else.
If you have 5-7 minutes, I’d greatly appreciate your perspective. Everyone who completes the survey by January 25, 2026 will be entered into a draw for a one-hour consultation for an artistic or cultural project and a Google Sheets template for project planning and funding applications.
Your answers will help me better understand the community’s needs — and shape what I’m working on to be as relevant and useful as possible.
Thanks in advance.
Dora