Guide to holding Online and Offline exhibitions at the same time

This article is for users on the Free and Exhibitor Pro Plans.

The Exhibit has been designed to allow offline exhibitions to run in conjunction with your online exhibitions. Your online exhibition will promote the offline location of your exhibition, playing a significant role in attracting wider audiences into your physical exhibition space as well as allowing art lovers from around the world to experience your exhibition.

This also means you don’t have to build complex exhibition features or upload artworks for sale on your own website to correspond with your offline exhibition. Simply let The Exhibit provide a purpose built and comprehensive exhibition experience to your audience, whether they can physically get in to see your offline show or not.

Add an offline location to your online exhibition

If your online exhibition has a corresponding offline exhibition, you will easily be able to add the address location of your offline exhibition during your online exhibition set-up. You can also add the exact opening and closing dates of your offline exhibition to your online exhibition on The Exhibit so they run in tandem.

If you are the artist, you can either choose to be the curator of the online exhibition on The Exhibit by completing the exhibition set-up online yourself, or the offline gallery or venue can take the role of curator and create your exhibition on The Exhibit for you.

Boost foot traffic to your offline exhibition

If you add the address of your offline exhibition to your exhibition on The Exhibit, the address of your offline exhibition will be promoted on The Exhibit as the location of your exhibition, thereby allowing you to market your exhibition online and attract a wider audience into your physical offline exhibition space.

Use your online exhibition as your pre-sale catalogue

You can also publish your online exhibition on The Exhibit prior to your exhibition’s opening dates. This allows you to share your unique exhibition URL with your network, email newsletter, social media followers, friends, family and interested collectors in advance of your exhibition opening.

When you publish your exhibition in advance it will display a countdown timer, counting down until your opening time. Your ‘For Sale’ and ‘On Enquiry’ artworks won’t be able to be purchased prior to your opening date but all artworks in your exhibition can be browsed, allowing interested buyers to bookmark what they like in advance and therefore build up more frenzy and excitement for your opening night.

Find out more about how to set exhibition opening times here.

Utilise your online exhibition inside your physical exhibition space

You can even use the online version of your exhibition inside your gallery space to provide more information to visitors via their smartphones; they will be able to watch video content, read extended wall labels and browse additional images to help them get the most out of their offline exhibition experience. And by having your online exhibition in the palm of their hands, it also makes it very easy for visitors to purchase your artworks, either while they are walking around your physical gallery, or at home after they’ve visited!

For pop-up offline exhibitions, The Exhibit can also be used as a complete sales payment platform in your physical gallery space without you even needing to hire or invest in expensive POS equipment.

Do the same artworks have to be in both exhibitions?

No. You can have some artworks exclusively online or exclusively in your offline exhibition space. However, we do recommend having as many artworks as possible from your offline exhibition also represented in your online exhibition as this allows visitors, art lovers and collectors, who are unable to access your offline exhibition, to still experience your exhibition in full and buy artworks from it.

Selling artwork in online and offline exhibitions

When you have both an offline and online exhibition, all ‘For Sale’ artworks exhibited in your online exhibition will ideally need to be transacted through The Exhibit when they sell. This means that sales transactions made in the offline gallery space for those same artworks will ideally need to be processed through The Exhibit instead of through any existing in-house POS system. However, it isn’t mandatory to do so.

If artworks are transacted in your gallery space during your ‘open exhibition dates’ on The Exhibit, you will need to edit the sales status of those artworks in your online exhibition from ‘For Sale’ to ‘Sold’ so you don’t accidentally sell the same work twice or mislead your online visitors that those artworks are still available.

If you do happen to sell the same artwork twice, elsewhere and then again on The Exhibit, please bear in mind there is a fee charged to refund your customer on The Exhibit. Please read more about our Double-sale Refund fees here.

To avoid any double-sale refund fees, we recommend processing your artwork sales transactions on The Exhibit instead of processing them elsewhere during your ‘open exhibition dates’.

Gallery commissions with online and offline exhibitions

If your online and offline exhibitions are both being curated by the offline gallery or venue, The Exhibit makes it easy for sales transactions to be divided between the artist and the gallery.

This is because The Exhibit has a revenue sharing facility in place which allows the gallery or venue to receive their commission automatically into their bank account when an artwork sells.

See more here about how revenue sharing works on The Exhibit and how pay-outs are managed here.