How to make a short artist bio
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How to Write an Artist Bio
As someone who interviews people for a living, I often ask interview subjects for a bio and a headshot. But any time someone has asked the same of me, I balk!
I’ve got the headshot covered but the bio gives me pause every single time, especially when I’m asked to write a bio as an artist. I find it challenging to write my artist bio. I want to sound serious but not pretentious. I want to honor the medium that I work in without making it more than it is. And I want to do it in a way that makes me seem like a good writer.
In some ways, it’s hard to write an artist bio for the same reasons that it’s hard to write resumes and cover letters. An artist bio needs to thread the needle of showcasing your accomplishments without appearing to brag. It can feel challenging to condense your entire artistic practice, vision, and CV into a few short sentences. If you don’t have accolades or degrees from fancy institutions, you might feel inadequate as yo
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The Gallery’s Guide to Writing Good Artist Bios
1. Create a concise summary
An artist bio should concisely summarise the artist’s practice. It’s not about covering an artist’s entire CV or full biography. Focus on a few main points that you believe to best introduce the artist and their art. Always include the medium, themes, techniques, and influences the artist works with.
2. Use clean, simple language
Use clean, simple language and avoid academic jargon and exaggerated language. Readers respond to authentic, simple texts and will take you much more seriously than if you use over-embellished language.
3. Grab the attention with a creative first sentence
Try to start the bio with a first line that is not simply a standard biographical introduction. Instead, be more creative and write a first sentence that grabs your readers’ attention while also telling them what is the most important thing about this artist and their work.
4. Include the artist's date of birt
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Note: Updates you make to artist biographies in CMS may take up to 24 hours to appear on Artsy, and sometimes longer in search engine results.
How to add and edit Artist Bios
Requesting changes to Artsy bios
How to Write Artist Bios
How to add and edit artist bios
You can easily update the artist biographies that appear on your gallery's page bygd following these steps:
Log in to CMS
Click the Artists page from the left-side navigation
Find the artist whose biography you’d like to add or edit and click “View Artist”
Scroll to the Written Biography section and click “Edit”
- Add an artist biography (2, character limit) and save your changes. We recommend drafting your biography in a document and copying it into CMS once complete for easiest editing.
Artsy may have already created a bio for your artist. In that case, you’ll see the following note along with a link to the existing artist biography:
Artsy already provides a bio for this