Help Centre

Anyone can take the role of exhibition curator on The Exhibit and create their own online exhibition, whether they’re a professional or amateur artist, a freelance curator, an arts student, a commercial gallery, or a cultural institution such as an art gallery, museum or archive.

What type of exhibitions can I curate?

As a curator, you can:

self-curate exhibitions of your own artwork on the Free and Exhibitor Pro Plans;
curate solo contemporary exhibitions showcasing the work of single artist, or curate group shows where multiple artists are involved, all on the Free and Exhibitor Pro Plans.
or curate exhibitions of historical artwork, social history and ethnographic objects, natural history specimens, archaeological artefacts, documents and publications on the Collections Pro Plan.

What types of artwork can I exhibit?

On the Free and Exhibitor Pro Plans, The Exhibit allows users to exhibit a wide variety of contemporary art forms including:

oil paintings
water colours
etchings
drawings
works on paper
collage
sculpture
assemblage
ceramics
photography
and even traditional indigenous art forms

If it’s an original artwork and you can photograph it, you can exhibit it!

Whether you create paintings of sloths dressed up as cats, glitter covered sculptures of miniature baby piglets, or crocheted decorative bananas, The Exhibit platform is suitable for all your exhibition needs.

We are also working on how to make The Exhibit work for digital and video artworks, performance art and site specific installations. So stay tuned!

What types of historical art and museum objects can I exhibit?

On the Collections Pro Plan, The Exhibit allows users to exhibit a wide range of historical artworks, objects, documents, publications and artefacts such as the following:

Historical artworks and art objects in all media types
Archaeological artefacts
Natural science specimens
Ethnographic objects
Social history objects and documents
Man-made objects, machinery, transport and electronic items
Photographs and associated photographic materials
Books, publications, letters, and documents

If it’s an authentic collection object and you can photograph it, you can exhibit it!

What are the fees to exhibit?

On The Exhibit there are 3 plans for you to choose from, depending on your needs. This allows you to tailor the platform to your own exhibition requirements.

The 3 plans are as follows:

Free Plan

You guessed it, if you’re using our Free Plan to exhibit, creating an exhibition on The Exhibit will always be free! This is because at The Exhibit we want to make exhibiting art accessible to everyone, so we only charge fees if/when you successfully make a sale, and even then our fees are the lowest in the industry. There’s also no listing or sign up fees for simply using or accessing The Exhibit platform.

Sales Success Fee

On the ‘Free Plan’, The Exhibit charges a low 10% sales success fee when an artwork is sold from your exhibition. This allows us to provide the service for free, expand the exhibition features we offer and continue to support our Free Plan exhibitors.

If you’re wanting even lower fees, then we recommend you consider our Exhibitor Pro plan which reduces your Sales Success Fee to just 3.5% for transactions that occur on The Exhibit, or zero fees for transactions that happen off of The Exhibit platform.

Transaction Processing & Payout Fee

Curators are responsible for covering an additional 4% transaction and payout processing fee incurred when making a sale, charged by our third-party payments provider Stripe. This 4% fee is deducted from the artwork sale price and covers the credit card processing fee and pay-out fee to deposit the sale revenue directly into your nominated bank account.

We recommend you price this fee in to the price of your listed artworks.

Note: a Curator of an exhibition on The Exhibit is the person who sets up the exhibition – for example, it might be the artist if it is a self-curated show, an independent curator or a gallery. So for artists listing their own exhibition on The Exhibit, they are considered both artist and curator and are therefore responsible for paying the fees associated with successfully making a sale.

Double-sale Refund Fee

There is one other fee to keep in mind and that is the Double-sale Refund Fee. You are responsible for making sure that any artworks you have available for sale on The Exhibit haven’t been already sold elsewhere, either offline or on another online platform. If an artwork does sell elsewhere, you will need to edit the sales status of that item in your exhibition to ‘Not For Sale’ before someone buys it again on The Exhibit. However, if you haven’t been keeping up to date with the availability of artworks in your exhibition and a customer happens to purchase an artwork on The Exhibit which has previously been sold elsewhere, and as a result you need to refund that customer, the Double-sale Refund Fee is charged. This fee is 7.5% of the artwork sale price and covers the fees related to administering the original sales transaction, refunding the customer and mitigating any customer dispute. It’s also used to ensure our exhibitors are providing the best experience possible to all art collectors by incentivising exhibitors to avoid any double-sale scenarios.

Exhibitor Pro Plan

The Exhibitor Pro plan is designed for commercial galleries, artists and curators who need more features and flexibility than the Free Plan above. This is a cost-effective subscription plan with monthly and annual pricing options available. For Plan features, current subscription pricing and special offers please see our pricing page here.

Sales Success Fee

For Exhibitor Pro Plan subscribers, we charge a low 3.5% sales success fee when an artwork sale is transacted on The Exhibit. This is significantly lower than the Free Plan’s Sales Success Fee of 10%. This fee allows us to provide the service, expand the exhibition features we offer and further continue to support our Exhibitor Pro users.

Transaction Processing & Payout Fee

We recommend you price this fee in to the price of your listed artworks.

Note, a Curator of an exhibition on The Exhibit is the person who sets up the exhibition – for example, a commercial gallery or freelance curator.

Double-sale Refund Fee

There is one other fee to keep in mind (as mentioned above for Free Plan users) and that is the Double-sale Refund Fee. You are responsible for making sure that any artworks you have available for sale on The Exhibit haven’t been already sold elsewhere, either offline or on another online platform. If an artwork does sell elsewhere, you will need to edit the sales status of that item in your exhibition to ‘Not For Sale’ before someone buys it again on The Exhibit. However, if you haven’t been keeping up to date with the availability of artworks in your exhibition and a customer happens to purchase an artwork on The Exhibit which has previously been sold elsewhere, and as a result you need to refund that customer, the Double-sale Refund Fee is charged. This fee is 7.5% of the artwork sale price and covers the fees related to administering the original sales transaction, refunding the customer and mitigating any customer dispute. It’s also used to ensure our exhibitors are providing the best experience possible to all art collectors by incentivising exhibitors to avoid any double-sale scenarios.

Collections Pro Plan

The Collections Pro plan is designed for cultural institutions such as art galleries, museums, archives and libraries who require custom features to exhibit historical collections and exhibitions.

The Collections Pro subscription plan has cost-effective monthly and annual pricing options available. For the plan features, current subscription pricing and special offers please see our pricing page here.

For more information about fees, please visit our Pricing Page here and find out more about how payouts work here.

How long does my exhibition stay online?

For users on the Free and Exhibitor Pro Plans, all exhibitions on The Exhibit are temporary, with defined opening and closing dates. You set your own opening and closing dates when you curate your exhibition. The time period can be completely of your choosing but cannot exceed 4 months.

On the Free Plan, when your exhibition finishes it remains on The Exhibit as an archived exhibition for visitors to keep viewing your artworks should you choose to leave it up. You will, however, not be able to sell artwork exhibited once your exhibition closes.

On the Exhibitor Pro Plan, again when your exhibition finishes it remains on The Exhibit as an archived exhibition for visitors to keep viewing your artworks should you choose to leave it up. However, any unsold artworks from you exhibition remain available for sale via your dedicated online Stockroom.

On the Collections Pro Plan, you can create permanent online exhibitions as the closing date field is optional. Or you can choose to have a closing date. Once closed your exhibition remains archived online should you choose to leave it up online or you can hide the exhibition via your account area.

Do all artworks included in my exhibition need to be for sale?

No, not all artworks in your exhibition will need to be for sale. With all other e-commerce art websites and auction portals the focus is on selling, this is not the case with The Exhibit. Exhibitions can be made up of a mix of for sale, not for sale and on enquiry artworks.

If you are using our Free Plan you require a minimum 50% of your exhibition artworks to be available for sale, however there are no rules and you have complete flexibility on the Exhibitor Pro and Collections Pro Plans.

I’ve never held an exhibition before, how will I know what to do to exhibit?

We have designed an intuitive exhibition set-up sequence which guides curators through a step by step curatorial process, so that no matter if this is your 100th exhibition or your first, you won’t forget anything and will be prompted at each step as to what information you need to curate a beautiful exhibition. Start curating your exhibition FREE here.

What will my online exhibition look like?

The Exhibit has been designed to replicate all the best elements of an offline exhibition and smartly incorporates all the features exhibition browsers will expect to see.

Just like in the offline world, each exhibition has its own entry page which works just like a title wall in a gallery space with the exhibition’s name, information about the artists and curators involved, an overview blurb of the exhibition and a promotional or branding image.

Each artwork or object in the exhibition is also accompanied by further information. This acts just like a wall label pinned to the wall next to an artwork or object in a physical gallery space.

You can add video to both your exhibition landing page and also to individual artworks.

You can also define your “wall colour” so your artworks are “hung” on the right background colour for your exhibition theme.

To see what others have done, view our Browse Exhibitions page here.

How will I direct my followers to my online exhibition?

We have built-in tools that make it super easy to promote your exhibitions online.

Each exhibition has its own custom URL to easily direct online traffic straight to your exhibition’s landing page. This makes it super easy to share your exhibition on social media, on your own website and by email to your email list.

And with our “OPENING SOON” features, you can share your unique exhibition page with your audience prior to your exhibition’s opening date.

For artists and commercial galleries this allows potential collectors to browse all artworks and bookmark their favourites before they become available for sale. You also don’t need to compile and send out a pre-sale catalogue. Instead, simply direct your list to your unique exhibition URL.

Will I be able to run an online and offline exhibition at the same time?

Yes! The Exhibit has been designed so online exhibitions can run in conjunction with offline exhibitions. Your online exhibition will promote the offline location of your exhibition, while also providing a complete view into what’s on show, playing a significant role in attracting wider audiences into your physical exhibition space.

The Exhibit can also even be used in the gallery space to provide additional information to visitors via their smart phones and as a sales payment platform without the need for expensive POS equipment.

Can you exhibit artwork which is also available for sale elsewhere?

Yes, you can definitely include artworks in your exhibition which are also currently available for sale elsewhere, for example in other galleries or online stores. However, there are a couple of things to keep in mind if you decide to do this. Please read our article here for all the details.

How do I get paid as an artist if a curator includes my artwork in their exhibition?

During exhibition set-up, each curator defines the revenue share arrangement between artists and curators for their exhibition. The Exhibit then automatically divides the sale value of each artwork sold between the artist’s and curator’s bank accounts, making the financial management of each exhibition a piece of cake.

The percentage of revenue a curator can claim is also capped so artists are never left short changed.

Note, when a Curator includes you and your artwork in their exhibition, you will be notified via email and given the opportunity to approve or disapprove your artwork in their exhibition.

How are shipping prices determined when I buy artwork from an exhibition?

The shipping costs and available delivery destinations of each artwork are set by the Exhibitor and display on each artwork listing. Any advertised shipping prices are the costs the Exhibitor needs to cover to ensure the artwork is packaged properly and reaches your location safely.

Have more questions? Ask us!

Please contact us should you need any further assistance. We’re here to help!