Writing An Exhibition Proposal in 20 Minutes

TLDR: The challenge is knowing why an exhibition matters to you right now...

Image Description: This is a photo of Zadie Pancakes, a rescue Staffordshire terrier with hip dysplasia, climbing a hill near my house, in the late afternoon sunshine. The hill overlooks the Hatch Valley, which is green with new growth. If you anthropomorphize your animal friends, then you might imagine Miz Pancakes is smiling. She moves slowly and steadily, and this is her favorite place to walk, despite the challenges. Perhaps you might imagine ZP as your exhibition proposal writing avatar: this isn’t easy, but it can also feel so good.

I was in Houston when I began this letter to you. I lead the seminar for the Block program at the Glassell School of Art, and I spent the afternoon in several hours of crits with my students. It was a luxury to be there in person, sharing space, and feeling nourished by good conversations with artists.

In seminar, we’re developing exhibition proposals, and so I thought that would be a good point from which to return to Studio for Tomorrow, after a bit of time away for personal reasons. Thank you for still being here, thank you for your support in all forms, thank you.

The biggest note I have about writing exhibition proposals is this:

We don’t technically need more exhibitions. This is probably not what you expected me to say, but there it is. I mean… we need more teachers and doctors, more hospitals that serve more people, we need more mental health support services, more affordable food and housing, more care in this terribly difficult world. Exhibitions, as much as I care about them, are not technically something we need. (There are many emotional, intellectual, and creative reasons they are truly important to a well-lived life, I know, I know!… I’ve literally dedicated my career to them, so don’t @ me here. I’m being literal, and since you have presumably also survived a global pandemic, you hopefully know I’m right. Exhibitions are a wonderful luxury, and when they’re good, they make life so much better.)

So. If you are going to propose an exhibition, I need you to have a damn good reason why you want to make this exhibition.

Putting a new line on your resume is certainly a reason, but it’s not a damn good one. It’s a very boring one. Having people see the work is also not a great one. There are other ways people can see your work, if that’s your goal. Sales can be a valid goal, if you rely on them to support yourself or your family, or if they allow you to buy the supplies you need to support your practice. But sales just for the validation of capitalism?…. well… blergh. So: try again. Whyyyyyy are you doing this? Why am I doing this? Why are we doing this?? A good answer doesn’t have to make sense to lots of other people, but it does have to be compelling for you (and the place where you are proposing to make the exhibition). What is the problem you are trying to work through? What is the new idea or creative experiment you would like to present? What gets you into the studio in the mornings (or middle-of-the-nights)? These are good reasons for an exhibition. How would an exhibition push the work forward, now? Why on earth do you want to make an exhibition, when you could be in the studio making new work instead? If you can answer that question, then you have a good reason for an exhibition proposal.

The other thing that is helpful as you begin drafting an exhibition proposal are finding some keywords from your studio. I hope you keep a notebook of ideas and imaginings around your work. Maybe you have followed me this far and started writing descriptions of your work. Maybe you write poetry or letters to friends and you mention your art practice. In any case, look back through anything you’ve jotted down from the studio in the past few months and think about which words or ideas (or materials or colors or or or!) show up more than once. What do you find yourself returning to? And, from that list, which words remain interesting to you now, today? (Don’t worry, this will change, and that is good… it means you are still alive and still evolving in your life as an artist.) The keywords that matter are the ones that still bring a smile to you when you read them and think about what you’re making. They are the words that you still puzzle over, or that make you giggle, or that the work constantly reminds you of. Don’t judge yourself for what these words are. Don’t try to force them into what you think the Art World wants from you. Just jot them down and keep them close.

Now think about the place you imagine presenting an exhibition. What is this place? It can be real or imagined: the point of the exercise is to connect your work to a place in a meaningful way, and perhaps the place you imagine doesn’t yet exist. That’s fine—if you can define what the place is, perhaps you can help it come into existence (or you can find it elsewhere). What architectural needs does your work have? Does it need lots of natural light? Lots of dark and moody atmosphere? What audience needs does your work have? Does it connect to a community, to politics, to obscure niche fan clubs, to certain histories that deserve to be told? Describe your selected place with care. This means—if it is a place that already exists—you should understand the place’s mission, its audiences, its programs, and its purpose. And you should explain why those things are authentically relevant to you, important and meaningful to you. Describe, describe, describe. You might describe a real art space in a way that they don’t describe themselves, and that’s okay: perhaps you are observing an aspect of their work that they haven’t even yet realized. The point is to describe the place with your own eyes. What makes it interesting to you? What connects it to the new ideas/visual experiments/politics/purpose of your work?

And, here is the exercise: Set a timer for 20 minutes. Using whatever method works best for you to write (maybe you like writing on a computer, maybe a notebook is better. Maybe you need to be in bed to write—I am currently writing this on a laptop, in a darkened room, in bed with a cat on my feet and hot coffee right beside me—or maybe you need to be in a coffeeshop that always plays Nirvana and where the barista knows your order and judges you a little bit for it), write for those 20 minutes without pause. Describe your work. Describe the exhibition you want to make. Describe the place you want to make the exhibit. Describe the major concerns of the work you want to show. Describe the why. Description will always be your ally. Your goal is to have about 300 words, but this is a flexible goal.

Once you’ve done the 20-minute draft, take a short break. Stretch your legs. Go outside. Talk to your cat. Full mental reset and refresh.

After the break: Read what you’ve written out loud. How does it strike you? What do you feel most confident about? What feels shaky? For the confident bits, move them to the forefront of the proposal. For the shaky bits, either cut them entirely, or spend 1-2 minutes making them stronger. Is there anything you think you should add? If it feels strange to read it aloud and you can’t quite hear it, read it to a voice recorder and then play it back to yourself. Where does your voice go high, where does it feel clear and steady? These are signals about what you’ve written and how you feel about it.

What happens next is up to you. You can sleep on it, re-read in the morning, and send it to the place you designed it for. You can tuck it away as a dreamy idea for the future. You can share it with a friend and see what they think. You can send it in immediately, and then move on with your life. You can send it to me! You can use it as a blueprint for the art space you want to develop. You can make this a daily exercise with the goal of better understanding the relationship between your work and architecture, audience, art discourse. You can run away shrieking that you’ll never do this exercise again! But, whatever you do next, you have written an exhibition proposal. So I hope you’ll also take a moment to celebrate your intrepid brilliance and then carry that back to your studio with you.

Sending you lots of Sunday afternoon writing courage,
Laura

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Yours,
Laura

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Laura August, PhD makes essays and exhibitions. She has curated more than 20 exhibitions as an independent curator working between the U.S. and Central America. In 2021, she was named an inaugural Mellon Arts + Practitioner Fellow at the Yale Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration, and her writing about contemporary art in Guatemala City has been recognized with an Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant. Alongside her consulting practice for artists and writers, she teaches a process, practice, and professional strategies class for artists at the Glassell School of Art, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. She currently makes her home on the edge of the Chihuahua Desert, and she is the first full-time Curator at the Stanlee and Gerald Rubin Center for the Visual Arts at The University of Texas at El Paso.