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Jobs and Career Help in the Arts

This guide provides career tips and resources specifically for artists, on how to improve your resume and portfolio, market yourself, and apply for grants.

Determining Your Rates

Before you go through the process of registering with an online or in-person art vendor to sell your work, you have to determine your prices. There are many ways to calculate how much you should charge. Factors to consider when deciding on your rate include the cost of materials, the time each piece took to create, the market rate for similar pieces, the vendor commission, and many others.

Wage for Work is an arts advocacy organization that works to establish sustainable economic relationships between artists and the institutions that contract our labor, and to introduce mechanisms for self-regulation into the art field that collectively bring about a more equitable distribution of its economy.

They offer a calculator on their website that can help you set your rate, based on the yearly operating budget of the institution you're working with.

They also provide a list of institutions around the country who pay fair rates to artists.

The Coalition of Small Arts NYC is an alliance of 30+ arts institutions that have committed to substantially paying artists.

If you're selling independently, Artwork Archive has several formulas you can use to help determine your rate. 

Art is My Career also offers a guide to setting prices.

 

Becoming an Online or In-Person Vendor

Online Art Selling Platforms

Please note: All these platforms take a commission from sales of artwork and/or charge a subscription fee to list your work.

At Amazon, we obsess over customers and their desire for a trusted destination for handcrafted goods, which is what prompted us to start Handmade. Artisans from over 80 countries are following their passion and selling their craft on Amazon. Together, we are growing craft communities and successful businesses.

At Artfinder, we do things a little differently. Our mission is to make art accessible, affordable, and a viable career for artists. We help buyers find pieces that they can’t find anywhere else. We value doing the right thing for our artists and customers and staying true to who we are above all else.

Sell art from your collection. With our global reach and art market expertise, our specialists will find the right buyer for your work.

Join the creative marketplace where millions of shoppers spend billions each year purchasing directly from creative entrepreneurs like you.

Peggy is the next generation of artist-collector connection, and our mission is to first and foremost support the livelihoods of artists. Why? Because artists are the ultimate observers of society with messages to share that create real change.

Sell your art to a global community of art lovers.

Tappan's mission is to make it easy for collectors to buy original art from working artists and to connect artists with collectors around the world. The experience of collecting art and following an artist's career should be something everyone can enjoy. Artists push our culture forward and help us see the world in new and interesting ways -- we are proud to support the variety of practices our artists bring to Tappan.

TurningArt curates artwork collections for businesses, commercial properties, healthcare institutions, and private residences nationwide. Our Art Advisory is dedicated to promoting our artists and incorporating their work into the collections we curate for our clients’ spaces.

 

 

We represent top emerging and mid-career artists from around the world. We're passionate about our collection and our artists, and we are always looking for talented artists with positive attitudes to join our community. UGallery is a juried platform, and we are seeking artists who are the right fit for our business and collectors. To see if that's you, get started today!

We're a marketplace that connects Customers, Creators, and Makers, powering the creation of almost anything.

New York City Art Fairs and In-Person Selling Opportunities

Please note: Most of these organizations charge a fee to rent a booth or sell your art within their premises. 

Lying at the heart of each of our fairs is the desire to make contemporary art accessible to everyone. Whether you know your Hockneys from your Hirsts, or you simply just enjoy basking in the glory of beautiful creativity, we believe everyone can be an art collector, whatever your taste and budget!

Artists & Fleas is a marketplace of makers - tastemakers, experience creators, designers, collectors and curators. Artists & Fleas is a place where shoppers & creators come together to discover and be discovered.

 

CLIO ART FAIR is a curated fair born with the challenge to launch independent artists and showcase the careers and achievements of already affirmed creative minds. By specifically targeting artists without any exclusive NYC gallery representation, CLIO ART FAIR focuses its attention on the kinds of contemporary art and interventions that are being created by independent artists all over the world.

The Downtown Brooklyn Arts Festival (DBAF) is an annual celebration of Downtown Brooklyn’s cultural community and the artists who inspire the borough’s creative spirit.

Fulton Art Fair was formed in 1958 for the exhibition, promotion and publication of the fine and performing arts in the City & State of New York, consisting primarily of artists of African American descent; the stimulation and encouragement of community interest in the field of fine and performing arts, the development and achievement of creativity as an expression of the community's status and heritage.

Come spend the day with natural fiber artists, crocheters, dyers, felters, knitters, quilters, spinners and weavers at our annual fiber festival. The full day event will include a marketplace for independent fiber artists from the tri-state area, demonstrations, an art exhibit and more!

The African market place offers an array of one of a kind, handcrafted, original designs of merchandise ranging from: jewelry, traditional and urban fashion, t-shirts, body oils to imported African fabric, home artifacts and furniture, original paintings, hand-carved marble sculptures and much more.

It is free for vendors to sell their art or perform in certain designated areas of many NYC public spaces

 

The Other Art Fair is a global gathering of creative thinkers, game changers, and pleasure seekers sharing emerging talent and unforgettable experiences. We’ve been dedicated to representing independent artists since 2011 and since then have worked with over 3,000 artists from more than 20 countries. We host 12 in-person fairs each year across the UK, US, and Australia.

PHOTOFAIRS New York is the contemporary art fair dedicated to photography and new media. The fair is a distinct new addition to the global fair calendar providing a dedicated space for galleries and audiences to explore an expansive view of the photographic medium. Taking place annually during New York’s Armory Week, the fair presents a state-of-the-art view of visual culture: from modern examples to contemporary intersections with digital and film. With presentations across three sectors – Main, Solo and Platform – the strong curatorial approach showcases the evolution and diversity of photo-based practices.

The SI MoCCA Arts Festival is a 2-day multimedia event. Located at Metropolitan Pavilion in the heart of Chelsea, MoCCA Fest is NYC’s largest independent comics and cartoon festival, drawing over 9,000 attendees each year.

SPRING/BREAK Art Show is an internationally recognized exhibition platform using underused, atypical, and historic New York City exhibition spaces to activate and challenge the traditional cultural landscape of the art market, typically but not exclusively during Armory Arts Week New York and Frieze Week LA. All artworks in the show are displayed and available for purchase online, giving artists unknown, emerging, mid-career, and beyond a virtual compliment to their tactile exhibitions. No- and low-cost exhibition space and low-cost entry for art patrons, public, and practioners alike aims to widen the arts audience in New York and Los Angeles and broaden the dialog of what constitutes value and economy in a 21st Century city.

Art fairs that break boundaries, defy conventions, and connect people. As the sun shines, artists want to make art. And we make that easier. How? It’s simple: by giving artists and curators the economic power to build client lists and generate sales results through our art fairs. We provide pre-qualified buyers, an outsized and targeted marketing budget, and the best infrastructure in the industry. Our expert marketing means that our buyer targeting strategy is revolutionary. We’re first-movers in accessible, artist-driven art fairs, and the largest, most widespread art fair for artists in the country.