How To Write an Artist C.V.
As an artist, your CV (curriculum vitae) is kind of like your resume, but instead of your work history, it’s your art history. It is a comprehensive record of all of your art accomplishments.
Your CV is a way for art professionals to get a sense of your career trajectory and can be a deciding factor when a gallery decides to offer you a show or when a collector considers acquiring your work. It can also help you express your qualifications for graduate school, grants, scholarships, or teaching opportunities.
Artist CV’s follow a relatively formulaic process, but there can be some variations depending on whether or not you’re involved in academia, moonlight as a curator, or participate in drum circles, for example. Simply put, not every artist CV will look exactly the same.
It’s also important to note that your artist CV is not a standard resume and doesn’t need to fit into only one or two pages. Generally speaking, the longer an artist’s career, the longer their CV will be. That being said, if your artist CV fits on one page, that’s okay! Everyone starts somewhere.
STANDARD ARTIST CV OUTLINE
If you’re a practicing artist, but not an academic, then this example is for you.
Take a look at the following artist CV examples written by established art galleries and an online CV:
As you can see from the examples, they follow a general outline, but they do vary depending on their experience and accomplishments. Below is a list of subheadings that would appear on an artist CV. Start by writing down these subheadings and then filling them in. Try to remember everything that would apply to each subheading. Always order each subheading’s list in reverse chronological order, so that the most recent date is listed at the top.
Use this general artist CV outline as a starting point.
Full Name
Born (when, where)
Lives and works (where)
Education
Solo Exhibitions
Group Exhibitions
Residencies
Awards
Grants
Notable Collections
Press/Bibliography
Now, let’s take a deeper dive into each section of your artist CV.
WHAT TO INCLUDE IN EACH SECTION OF YOUR ARTIST CV
Always start with your full name, year, city, and state/country in which you are born in, followed by where you are currently based (lives and works in…).
For example:
Jack Smith
Born 1982 in Hickory, North Carolina, USA
Lives and works in Newport News, Virginia, USA
List your education at the top of the CV
Next, list your education credentials, starting with the most recent degree(s) earned. Depending on what you prefer, you can either put the range of the years you attended the school or just the year you graduated. Only list your secondary and graduate schools. If you have no formal art education, you can use the education section of your CV to highlight any casual mentorships, art classes, workshops, and schooling that you have had. I don’t recommend listing any education on your CV that doesn’t explicitly link to your art career.
Year - Year MFA Penn State University, State College, Pennsylvania
Year - Year BFA School For The Visual Arts, New York, New York
Next, list all of your solo and group exhibitions
Your exhibitions should ideally be divided into Solo and Group subheaders. However, if you have only one or tow solo exhibitions, you can list all of your exhibitions together and mark the solo exhibitions by writing [solo] after the exhibition line. If you choose to combine the exhibitions, writing ‘Selected Exhibitions’ is a nice touch, but not a requirement.
The order should be:
Year Title of the exhibition (in italics), venue name, venue location
The exhibition should always be listed first. If you need to mention a curator or other artists featured in the exhibition, put those details after the title or after the venue name.
If you participate in art fairs, they can be listed here, too, especially if you don’t have many gallery shows.
Year Art fair name, with Gallery XX (if applicable), fair location
List any residencies, awards, or grants you have received
You can list Residencies, Awards, and Grants in any order, or even combined (like solo and group exhibitions), but dates should still be listed in reverse chronological order. You should include the year, name, any important jurors, and location (if applicable).
Year Name of residency, location
Year Name of the award, foundation name, location (if applicable)
Year Name of the grant, jurors (if applicable), granting foundation name, location (if applicable)
Add any notable collections in which your work belongs
Notable collections should include all museum collections and corporate or major private collections that thave acquired your art. You can list these as “permanent collections,” or “public collections” if the list is only museum or institutional collections.
Collections should be listed in alphabetical order.
Consider including a press and bibliography section at the end
With the rise of online-only publications, the bibliography has, at times, been replaced by a list of hyperlinks instead of the traditional book/magazine APA format. However you choose to list your press is ultimately up to you, but I recommend following format based on the best practices of library and archival science:
Author last name, first name, “Article title” (in quotes), Publication title (in italics), Publisher (if applicable), publication date, pages (if applicable), hyperlink to article (if applicable)
You’ve now completed your artist’s CV! Yay!
Once you’ve started your CV, make sure to save it so it can be easily accessed and updated. I keep mine in a Word doc and also save it as a PDF. The PDF is great for sending to people via email, as well as for having a downloadable option on your website.
