How (not) to run an art competition
Recently, a few people wrote to let me know about a new international art competition, run by the Fabric of St. Peter’s Basilica. The challenge is to create a new set of Stations of the Cross, and the prize is €120,000.
That sounded intriguing enough for me to investigate. After reading the rules carefully, I not only decided against participating — I felt compelled to caution other artists against doing so. After sharing my reasoning on my own social media accounts, I had conversations with many other artists who have noticed the same thing I have: most art competitions are actually quite bad for artists.
This is especially frustrating because they do not need to be so. And indeed, I believe that most of the organizers of these competitions intend to do something good for the arts. They just never look at the rules and requirements that they establish from an artist’s perspective. And because the institutions of the Catholic Church have such a long and honored history of art patronage, it is embarrassing that two of the worst recent examples of how to run an art competition that I can think of came from within the Vatican.
In 2017, a competition was announced to design vestments for the World Meeting of Families in Dublin. Those who ran it encouraged artists worldwide to follow in the steps of Henri Matisse and the Dun Emir Guild. Would you like to have one of your designs featuring at the heart of an event with an international audience of tens of millions? Would you like to see one of your creations being worn by the Pope? they asked.
I was intrigued by this, read the rules, decided not to apply, and forgot about it. It was only after the results were announced that I became seriously offended by the competition. And not because the final designs were ugly (although in my opinion, they were).
No, what offended me is that the judges reserved the right not to award the prize to any of the entrants, and ultimately decided to hire a liturgical arts company to design them instead. Instead of just going to that company with their instructions in the first place, they dangled €1000 in prize money in front of artists all over the world, hoping that one of them would guess correctly what they already had in mind. In their own words, they received a delightful number of submissions, from artists who put serious effort into preparing proposals, and drafting artwork that nobody else is likely to buy. None of these artists received any money, or even any publicity, in return. What a complete waste of their valuable time that turned out to be.
The new contest sponsored by St. Peter’s Basilica looked, at first, more promising. Certainly, the prize is much bigger. And the first steps for entering the competition seemed reasonable; artists first submit a CV and portfolio. Those whose work is in line with what the judges want are invited to submit a 20" × 20" sketch. I actually like this a lot; it assures that artists who have no realistic chance of winning don’t waste their time preparing entries.
The winner, ultimately, is required to produce fourteen paintings, each four feet square, in just over 14 months. Since I specialize in small ink drawings, that would require something of a departure for me in terms of materials and style, were I to win. But €120,000 is much more than I normally make over 14 months, so I started to make some calculations… Were I to work on this project and only this project, postpone all other commissions and speculative work until 2026, and rearrange my basement into a painting studio, I could probably figure something out. At the end of it, I would have a set of major works that I could try to sell, which might generate a lot of print sales also. And I know, from experience, that working for big ecclesiastical institutions does get a lot of attention.
Then I kept reading, and realized: Oh wait, they intend to keep the paintings, don’t they?
That made everything different; the artists who enter are not competing for a prize, but for a commission. This money isn’t being given out as a bonus; it’s being given out as payment for the artwork. Now believe me, I have no problem with receiving commissions. But they aren’t prizes, not any more that other exchanges of goods or services for money are prizes. Now I started a different set of calculations: €120,000 means approximately $9,405 for each 4' × 4' painting. That is… not necessarily a lot.
Now I know that there are all sorts of different factors that determine the pricing of artwork. My own rates, calculated per-square-inch, are higher than some other artists’ because my work is minutely detailed. Those who work in looser, more abstract styles can probably fill a 4' × 4' canvas much faster than I can fill a piece of paper. Some people prefer that kind of art. But most of the painters whom I admire would, I think, be selling themselves short to accept a commission like this one.
And then, I read that the winner will only receive €20,000 in advance. How exactly is he or she supposed to pay the rent and feed the kids during the time it takes to make fourteen big paintings? Who could afford to win this, except someone who is independently wealthy, or who paints so quickly that he or she can finish them all in a few months?
And then, I read that the Fabric of St. Peter’s Basilica requires, from the winner, a formal deed of unconditional assignment of the Via Crucis, including the relative rights of use and exploitation of the work, without any constraint whatsoever. This was when I became angry again.
Sometimes aspiring artists come to me for advice. There is one thing that I tell all of them. Please pay attention to this: If you are a fine artist working as an independent contractor, making wholly original work, never give up your intellectual property rights.
Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, give up your intellectual property rights.
To anyone. Not to a patron, not to a publisher, certainly not to a prize committee. If anyone asks you to sell, transfer, or relinquish the copyright to your artwork, say politely that you never do this, but that you are willing to negotiate a license for the purposes he or she requires. Most patrons and publishers will accept this and work out the license with you. Avoid doing business with anyone who pushes back and insists on getting the copyright from you. Giving up a copyright essentially means that in the eyes of the law, the person who obtains it made the artwork and can do whatever he or she wants with it — and you didn’t, and can’t.
The intellectual property rights to a work of art are often more valuable, in the long run, than the work itself. They may be the most valuable things, in monetary terms, that you will ever own. They are what allow you to protect the integrity of your creative vision. They are what allow you to generate passive income from your existing work, in the form of derivative works, prints, merchandise, or licenses for reproduction. And they can continue to do this for you for the rest of your life, and for your heirs long after your death (for seventy years, if you are an American). For an independent artist, the rights to your intellectual property are one of the only legal or economic advantages in your line of work. They function like your investment portfolio, your retirement fund, your legacy, your life insurance.
That anyone running a contest would ask an artist to give this away offends me deeply. Presenting it as a condition of a prize (something that the artist should be grateful to receive) strikes me as absurd. If a commission were offered to me, personally, with the same terms as this supposed prize, I would decline it immediately.
Out of morbid curiosity, I read the rest of the rules, and saw that the Fabric of St. Peter expects the artists who do not win the competition to retrieve their submitted sketches in person. Or, exceptionally, to arrange for other means of returning them, at their own expense. The rules then state: Upon expiry of the above-mentioned deadlines, all sketches remaining in storage at the Fabric of Saint Peter will become the property of the Fabric of Saint Peter itself, which will be entitled to all rights and full use of the same, for the present and for the future, without any right to compensation and/or consideration for the participant, who renounces such right by participating in the competition.
In other words, if you lose the contest, you have to pay to get your artwork back — or you lose that also, and all the rights to it, forever. But guess what? You will receive a participation certificate!
There is a different kind of art competition that annoys me less than the commission-in-disguise. This is the one whose purpose is to put together an exhibit or a show, either in an actual gallery space or online. These may seem altogether harmless and indeed beneficial, but I seldom enter them because most of them charge an entry fee.
The issue for me isn’t the size of the fee; it’s the fact that money is moving in the wrong direction. I dislike seeing organizations that claim to support the arts taking money from artists, whether that is in the form of membership dues or competition entry fees. I question whether such organizations should even exist if they are incapable of securing their funding from other sources. And I refuse to join any unless the benefits it offers are clear and obvious and worth at least as much as I am paying.
When the prize money for an art competition is collected from entry fees, that amounts to taking artists’ money and redistributing it amongst us. It doesn’t actually support the arts any more than a football pool would.
I find the usual justification for charging these fees — that they assure only serious entries are submitted — unconvincing. Being a serious artist and having money to spare don’t really correlate. A hobbyist with a second job is probably more likely to fall into the second category than someone who makes his livelihood through artwork. And really, why can’t the organizers be bothered to sort through unserious entries? Why should the artists pay to spare them that task?
To anyone who may want to run an art competition in the future, I ask that he or she bear the following things in mind:
1. A competition does not inspire creativity; it merely diverts it. I imagine that some organizers of competitions, when looking at the submitted entries, think to themselves: How wonderful that we were able to help bring all this new artwork into being! Well, not necessarily. Artists, generally, have more ideas than they have time to realize. We do not sit around idle, making nothing, until a competition is announced. The time and effort put into a competition entry is time and effort that is not put into another project. That other project may very well be more artistically excellent, more personally fulfilling, or more lucrative.
2. Paying someone fairly for his work is an obligation, not a prize. If the prize to the competition amounts to no more than the cost of buying the winning work, it is not so much a competition as a job application process. Which is fine, but please be forthright and present it as such.
3. It is wrong to ask job applicants to complete a task for which they will be hired (or a large part of it) before they know if they will be paid. If you want to know whether job applicants are well-suited to the task, you should determine that using the same means that any honest employer uses. You can ask for portfolios; you can ask for résumés; you can ask for interviews. Do not ask for free work.
4. If you are giving an actual prize (which is to say that the winner gets the money and keeps his art to sell) then you are justified in asking artists to submit something brand new. But the artists should have the possibility of profiting from their work even if they lose. If the artwork that you ask them to submit is so specific to your own purpose, organization, or event that it has no chance of being sold on speculation, then you really should not hold a competition. Instead, you should find an artist who is willing to collaborate with you, and hire him or her for the job.
5. The artists should get some publicity for their effort even if they lose. Display the entries, or at least the finalists, after deciding upon a winner. This will also hold you accountable to the public for making a good decision.
6. You should promise to give out the prize. If you are concerned that there will not be enough entrants, then do more to attract them to the competition. That no artist will give you exactly what you want is the risk that you assume when you hold a competition. The entrants should not be required to assume that risk instead.
7. You should not charge an entry fee. If you have no money to give away, don’t hold a competition until you have raised some. That is what organizations that support the arts are supposed to do: raise funds to give to artists, or to spend on things that actually benefit them. If you only have a little money, know that offering a little prize is better than taking money from artists in order to offer a big one.
8. But first, be sure that you can cover any expenses associated with entering or winning the competition, such as postage, return postage, insurance, and framing. Make it reasonably easy, convenient, and costless for artists to participate.
9. And you should never make any claim on the copyright of the submitted artwork, whether it wins the prize or not. Asking all entrants for a license to display the artwork online or in marketing materials is fine. If you want a license to use it for other purposes, negotiate that separately.
As a working artist, I can say that I would much more readily submit my work to a competition that did all of this, even if the prize money were done away with altogether. From the conversations I have had, I think many other artists would also.