How to Set Opening and Closing Dates for Your Exhibition

How to set Opening and Closing Dates for your exhibition

Each exhibition on The Exhibit is temporary in nature and has a defined opening and closing date – just like a traditional bricks and mortar exhibition.

However, all exhibitions remain online for everyone to enjoy, even after closing, unless you choose to take them down.

The opening and closing dates you select are completely of your choice. The duration of your exhibition is completely of your choosing but the maximum duration for open exhibitions on the platform is 4 months (120 days). Just like an offline exhibition, online exhibitions on The Exhibit are finite rather than being a permanent shop fixture, which is proven to create more excitement for your event and more urgency to buy available artworks during the finite purchasing period.

Exhibitions can be published live on The Exhibit any time prior to your opening date and the platform will automatically display a countdown timer on your exhibition entry page, counting down until your exhibition opening time. This allows your audience to pre-view your exhibition (similar to how a pre-show catalogue works) and create some anticipation before your For Sale artworks become available for sale (unless you’re a non-commercial gallery or museum of course).

Each exhibition also has an opening ‘time’, this is the time of day when your exhibition goes live on your opening date. You might want your exhibition to open in the early morning or you might want to have an evening “opening night”. Your exhibition will close at this same time on your closing date.

We recommend publishing your exhibition a minimum of 2 days before your exhibition opening date, but ideally 2 weeks or more in advance to allow for a buildup to your opening. Having a bit of time between the published date and your opening date/time such as this, allows you to inform your personal network, art collectors, followers on social media, your email list and website subscribers about your upcoming exhibition. This builds buzz around your exhibition and lets them check out your exhibition before it opens so they can be ready to buy available artworks when it opens.

Once your exhibition closes, it will remain on The Exhibit for art lovers to discover and enjoy, but it will show a “closed” status.

If you’re using the Free Plan, your artworks will no longer be available for purchase after your exhibition closes (until such time as you decide to re-list any un-sold artworks in a new exhibition).

If you have an Exhibitor Pro account, any unsold artworks remaining at the close of your exhibition will continue to be available for sale in both your closed exhibition and also in your dedicated Online Stockroom. Your stockroom can be managed via your account area and collectors can shop from your Stockroom directly from your profile page.

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Start creating your first online exhibition today, for free!

Have more questions?

View our Exhibitor Handbook for more helpful guides, or please don’t hesitate to contact us at support@theexhibit.io and we’ll get right back to you!