Artist Professional Practices - The Business of Art

This series of classes and workshops are designed to help artists that are interested in pursuing the business side of their creativity. Get on the right track in turning your creative talents into a successful business!

Tell a friend about these programs.

Classes and Workshops:

Artist's Business Plans
Dates/Times: New dates to be announced
Location: 726 Lowell Center, 610 Langdon St., Madison, WI
Fee: $75
Program number: #2518 How to register

Description: In this fun three-session course we get down to business quickly to help you develop an effective written plan for your art career. We cover goals, exhibits, cash flow, and much more. Expect homework and bring a positive attitude to this useful class, which helps you understand the pleasures and pains of doing business in the ever-changing art world. Instructor: Tony Rajer (BA, UW-Madison; additional art-conservation studies at Harvard, the Sorbonne, and Univ of London) is a recent Fulbright professor to Panama and former State Capitol art conservator. Instructor: Tony Rajer

The Business of Art
Dates/Times: New dates to be announced
Location:
Fee:
Program number:

Description

The Fall 2007 Business of Art class.

How do I get my work shown in an art gallery? How do I prepare my portfolio? These are some of the fundamental topics and issues we discuss in this fascinating course. Assess your own strengths and weaknesses as an artist, manager, and small business owner within the art industry. Set goals, create a business plan, and learn how to network with other professionals, galleries and museums.

The Business of Art course includes tips on grant writing, numerous handouts about the art industry, as well as life strategies for developing your art business and making it a successful enterprise. This course is designed for anyone who is serious and concerned about developing their art career. It's perfect for individuals such as university students, young professionals, or those people in a life transition going from one profession to another.

During the course we look at actual case studies of successful artists. We discuss the risks involved in developing an art career as well as the rewards. Several guest artists will come in to discuss their own art careers and how they developed. In addition, we create a business plan, a mission statement, and discuss success strategies for implementing the business plan. We look at the characteristics for successful development of a small art business, including the actual product that you are producing, whether or not there is a market for the art that you produce, and a marketing strategy.We look at developing a course of action and a realistic budget. We review options related to the development of websites, postcards, business cards, etc. We create a calendar of action that includes the steps to implement your dream.

The course refers to numerous books that have been written on the business of art. Also, through the implementation of this course over the past several years we've generated several handouts to help individual artists.

By the end of the course you will have the ability to assess your weaknesses and strengths as an artist and to know if you should go ahead and develop your own art business.

Student comments

Students say what they liked best was....

• "The clear handouts that told me exactly how to write a business plan." ~Dana Slowlak, Madison
• "[That it was] positive, fun, a good community builder." ~Jaclyn Jaunski, Madison

Your instructor

Tony Rajer (BA, UW-Milwaukee) is a professionally trained art conservationist and was recently a Fulbright professor to Panama. Tony has been involved in art conservation and restoration projects for the past 20 years, initially in Madison, Wisconsin as the conservator for the State Capitol and more recently as a part-time instructor for the Department of Continuing Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he has taught since 1993. Tony is also the author of Museums, Zoos and Botanical Gardens of Wisconsin: A comprehensive guidebook to cultural, artistic, historic and natural history collections in the Badger state. The book celebrates the diversity of these assets of cultural and natural history preserved for educational and recreational uses.

Check out the Brava Magazine interview with Tony Rajer.

Resources

Find more professional practice resources for artists here www.artuw.com

How to register

By phone: Call 608-262-7942.

By mail: Print and mail the UW Continuing Studies registration form.

By fax: Print and fax the UW Continuing Studies registration form.

Online: Secure online registration is available for this program.

UW-Madison Continuing Studies | Classes | Services | Register | About Us