Visual Arts
Located in New York City’s historic Flatiron district, the Pen and Brush gallery works to support contemporary artists through our exhibition programming. We work with curators and colleagues in the field to offer women artists, who are creating important work that is under-exposed, a variety of exhibition opportunities through our program.
Submission Process
Our submission program is open to all women artists internationally and the process is transparent:
- Artists submit a portfolio of work (6 min. 12 max) and their artist statement, C.V., through our website.
- P+B staff art historians conduct reviews of all submissions on a continual basis. This is an objective review to ensure that the work we are showing to curators is reflective of the standards of the field. Because our program is specifically addressing lack of access to the primary art market and we are creating exposure for the artists we work within New York City, it is essential that all work accepted for consideration meet the following standards:
- All work must be contemporary art. For further clarification please consult the following resources: Art21, Contemporary Art in Context
- Getty Museum
- All work(s) submitted for consideration must be professionally executed and photographed. Photographs of works of art must be clear, centered, high quality. Works of art must be finished, fully developed, ready to display works.
- Pen + Brush reserves the right to reject work based on issues of quality.
- All work(s) submitted must be available for exhibition and for sale.However, Pen + Brush does not hinder artists’ opportunities and will work with artists to switch out works in portfolios that are no longer available.
- If selected for exhibition, Pen + Brush expects the selected and agreed upon works to be available and for sale for the duration of exhibition.
- All work submitted must have been created within the last ten years.
- If work does not meet these standards it will be rejected upon Pen and Brush’s internal review at it is not a fit for our program opportunity.
- Portfolios that do meet these standards will be accepted and the materials will be considered by curators working with us during your submission period.
Approved Submissions
- If your portfolio is approved by Pen and Brush your work will remain in our pool and viewable to curators working with us for a minimum of 6 months. During this time, if work in your portfolio is sold or selected for exhibition outside of P+B, please contact us to discuss updating your portfolio with comparable works that are still available.
- Curators have the ability to select an artist for any type of exhibition type: solo, group, featured concepts or media based exhibitions. P+B staff will contact you if a curator has any additional questions about your work, if they are considering your work for an exhibition, and/or if they have selected your work for a specific exhibition to discuss the terms.
- If you are selected for an exhibition, details and timing will be discussed and agreed upon at the time.
After an artist has exhibited at Pen + Brush, they become eligible for our artist roster list. P+B staff will continue to review existing body of work, discuss her new work, and then determine what additional exhibition opportunities might be viable and fit into P+B’s exhibition schedule in the coming months. Additional exhibitions developed from our exhibited artist roster are at the sole discretion of Pen and Brush staff, and both parties (artist and P+B) may elect to opt out at any time. Artists who become part of our roster will also be profiled on our website and on electronic devices in our space on an ongoing basis.
Additional Facts and Preparing Your Submission
Open Rolling Submission / No Entry Deadlines / No Submission Fees
Only one submission will be accepted per artist during a given submission period. At the expiration of their submission period, an artist may submit a new set of works for review.
Submissions are reviewed on a continual basis, artists can expect to receive an acceptance or rejection email notification within or up to six months of completing a submission.
If Pen + Brush does not accept an artist’s portfolio the artist will receive a rejection message. Pen + Brush asks that artists please wait a period of one year to resubmit new work for consideration.
An artist statement must be copied and pasted into your submission.
A professional C.V. must be uploaded as a PDF file during your submission.
Artists may submit a minimum of 6 works and a maximum of 12 works. *Minimum number of works required may be waved for large-scale sculpture and installations.
Submitted images should be high resolution at 300dpi and in jpeg format. The quality should be high enough for curators to see fine details in the submitted work.
Please title each image file with your LAST NAME and the title of the work. Please do not use any
spaces or characters for example: Smith_Untitled_22
Image requirements:
- 300 dpi
- Must be a .jpg , .tif , or eps file.
- Please do not submit .png images
- Images should be at approx. 5” x 7” or 1500 x
- 2100 pixels
- Minimum file size of 800 KB for each jpeg
Video and other digital art should be optimized for web viewing when submitted for review. Video content should be posted on video hosting sites such as YouTube or DailyMotion. Links can be copy and pasted in the text box of your submission upload. Arrangements to obtain higher quality versions will be made if a work is accepted for exhibition.
Portfolios of works by artists are to be submitted for consideration in electronic form.
During your online submission you will be asked to agree to the following terms: Visual Art Submission Terms