Artist CV Template and Examples: How to Write One That Curators Take Seriously
An artist CV is not a résumé with the word “art” swapped in. It is a specific document, written in a specific order, that curators, jurors, residency directors, and gallerists read fluently and skim quickly. When it follows the conventions they expect, it disappears — they read your history, not your formatting. When it doesn’t, it announces inexperience before anyone has seen a single work.
This guide gives you the structure the art world actually uses, a template you can copy, and worked examples for artists at different stages — including the one most guides ignore: the artist who feels they have “nothing to put on it yet.”
What an artist CV is (and how it differs from a résumé)
An artist CV (curriculum vitae) is a complete, factual record of your professional artistic activity: where you’ve exhibited, studied, been funded, published, and collected. It is used for gallery submissions, residency and grant applications, open calls, teaching posts, and public-art commissions.
It differs from a standard professional résumé in three ways that trip people up:
- It can run more than one page. Unlike a corporate résumé, an artist CV is allowed to grow. A mid-career artist’s CV of three or four pages is normal. What matters is that every line earns its place.
- It has no “objective,” no skills bars, no photo, and no design flourishes. The art world reads a CV as evidence, not marketing. A clean, typographic document signals that you understand the field. A CV with icons, colour blocks, or a headshot signals the opposite.
- It is organised by category, not by chronology alone. Solo exhibitions, group exhibitions, residencies, awards, and publications each get their own section, and each section runs in reverse-chronological order.
Artist CV vs. artist résumé: A CV is the comprehensive document. A résumé is a condensed one-to-two-page version you tailor to a single opportunity — trimming to the exhibitions and awards most relevant to that jury. Keep a full CV; cut a résumé from it when asked.
The sections of an artist CV, in order
Not every artist has content for every section, and that’s expected. Include the sections that apply to you, in this conventional order:
- Name and contact details
- Education
- Solo Exhibitions
- Group Exhibitions (use “Selected Group Exhibitions” once the list gets long)
- Residencies
- Grants, Awards & Fellowships
- Commissions
- Collections (public and private)
- Publications / Bibliography — split into press about you and writing by you
- Talks, Lectures & Teaching
- Professional Experience (optional; only if relevant to the application)
The golden rule that governs all of them: reverse chronological order, most recent first, with consistent formatting on every single line. Inconsistency — a comma here, a semicolon there, a city missing on one entry — is the single most common tell of an amateur CV.
The standard entry format
Almost every line on an artist CV follows the same skeleton:
Year — Title (italicised), Venue/Organiser, City, Country
Examples:
- 2025 — Soft Borders, Kunstverein Hannover, Hanover, Germany
- 2024 — The Weight of Air, Galerie Nord, Berlin, Germany
Conventions worth knowing:
- Italicise exhibition and work titles. Venue and place names stay in regular type.
- Add “(solo)” or “(two-person)” in a group-exhibition section only when needed for clarity; otherwise the section heading already tells the reader.
- Include the curator’s name for significant shows: …, curated by [Name].
- Country is included when your CV is international — and for an audience applying across borders, it almost always should be.
Artist CV Template
Copy this structure directly. Replace the bracketed content, delete any section that doesn’t apply, and keep the formatting identical line to line.
FIRST LAST NAME
City, Country · email@domain.com · website.com · @instagram
EDUCATION
20XX MFA, [Programme], [Institution], City, Country
20XX BFA, [Programme], [Institution], City, Country
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
20XX Exhibition Title, Venue, City, Country
20XX Exhibition Title, Venue, City, Country
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
20XX Exhibition Title, Venue, City, Country, curated by [Name]
20XX Exhibition Title, Venue, City, Country
RESIDENCIES
20XX Residency Name, Organisation, City, Country
GRANTS, AWARDS & FELLOWSHIPS
20XX Award / Grant Name, Awarding Body, Country
COMMISSIONS
20XX Commission Title, Commissioning Body, City, Country
COLLECTIONS
Institution / Collection Name, City, Country
Private collections, [Countries]
PUBLICATIONS & PRESS
20XX Author, "Article Title," Publication, date or issue, page.
20XX [By the artist] "Essay Title," Publication, date.
TALKS, LECTURES & TEACHING
20XX Role / Talk Title, Institution or Event, City, CountryExample 1 — Emerging artist (early career)
If you’re early on, your CV is short, and that is completely acceptable. Do not pad it. A tight, honest CV of group shows and one residency reads as promising; a padded one reads as desperate. Everything below “counts”: juried group shows, degree/graduate exhibitions, artist-run and off-space shows, online exhibitions with a real curatorial frame, small grants, and workshops you’ve led.
MAYA OKONKWO
Leipzig, Germany · maya.okonkwo@email.com · mayaokonkwo.com · @maya.makes
EDUCATION
2024 BFA Fine Art, Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig (HGB), Leipzig, Germany
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2025 Ground Truth, Spinnerei Archiv Massiv, Leipzig, Germany
2024 HGB Graduate Show, Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany
2024 Near Field (online), Foundwork, curated by A. Vogel
2023 Open Studios Vol. 3, Pilotenküche Project Space, Leipzig, Germany
RESIDENCIES
2025 Summer Studio Fellow, Pilotenküche International, Leipzig, Germany
GRANTS & AWARDS
2024 Graduate Production Grant, HGB Leipzig, Germany
TALKS & WORKSHOPS
2025 "Working with Cyanotype," workshop, Volkshochschule Leipzig, GermanyWhy it works: It is honest and consistent. It separates group shows from the residency and grant so a juror can scan the shape of a career in five seconds. No solo-exhibition heading appears, because there are no solo shows — leaving the empty heading out is stronger than inventing content for it.
Example 2 — Mid-career artist
Once the list grows, add “Selected” to your longest sections, split press from your own writing, and let the CV run to several pages. You are now curating your own history: keep the strongest, most recent, and most reputable entries near the top of each section.
JOÃO MENDES
Lisbon, Portugal · studio@joaomendes.art · joaomendes.art
EDUCATION
2014 MFA Sculpture, Slade School of Fine Art, London, UK
2011 Licenciatura, Fine Art, Faculdade de Belas-Artes, Lisbon, Portugal
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2025 The Slow Collapse, Galeria Filomena Soares, Lisbon, Portugal
2023 Load-Bearing, Copperfield, London, UK
2021 Ballast, Kunsthalle Osnabrück, Osnabrück, Germany
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2024 Material Witness, Gulbenkian, Lisbon, Portugal, curated by R. Costa
2023 Heavy Weather, Manifesta satellite, Barcelona, Spain
2022 New Sculpture Now, Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK
RESIDENCIES
2022 Gasworks International Residency, London, UK
2019 Rijksakademie Open Studio Fellow, Amsterdam, Netherlands
GRANTS, AWARDS & FELLOWSHIPS
2023 DGArtes Production Grant, Ministry of Culture, Portugal
2020 Villa Romana Prize, Florence, Italy
COMMISSIONS
2024 Ballast II, permanent public commission, Lisbon City Council, Portugal
COLLECTIONS
Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon, Portugal
Fundação EDP / MAAT, Lisbon, Portugal
Private collections, Portugal, UK, Germany
SELECTED PRESS & PUBLICATIONS
2025 R. Costa, "The Weight João Mendes Carries," Contemporânea, Spring 2025.
2023 [By the artist] "Notes on Ballast," Sculpture Journal, no. 42.
2021 Frieze critic's pick, frieze.com, 14 March 2021.
TALKS, LECTURES & TEACHING
2024 Visiting Lecturer, MA Sculpture, Slade School of Fine Art, London, UK
2023 Artist talk, Gulbenkian, Lisbon, PortugalExample 3 — CV tailored to a residency or grant application
For a specific application, you don’t send your whole history — you send a résumé cut from your CV, reordered so the panel sees relevance first. A residency jury cares about prior residencies and your ability to work independently; a grant panel cares about production grants, budgets delivered, and public outcomes.
Practical adjustments when applying through an open call:
- Lead with what the brief rewards. Applying to a research-heavy residency? Move Residencies and Publications above Group Exhibitions.
- Trim to one to two pages unless the guidelines explicitly ask for a full CV.
- Match their language. If the call names specific disciplines or themes, make sure the relevant lines are visible and clearly labelled.
- Read the guidelines twice. Some funders require a specific CV length, format, or file name. Following that exactly is itself part of what’s being assessed.
Every open call on ArtInfoLand lists its own requirements — always tailor the CV you send to the brief in front of you rather than reusing a single generic file.
The mistakes that get a CV skimmed and set aside
- Inconsistent formatting. One section uses commas, another dashes; one line has a country, the next doesn’t. This is the fastest way to look unprofessional.
- Padding. Listing a café group show as though it were a museum, or splitting one show into three lines. Experienced readers see through it instantly.
- Design over substance. Columns, icons, colour, a photo, a logo. Strip all of it. Black text, clear hierarchy, generous spacing.
- Mixing a CV with an artist statement or bio. They are three separate documents. The CV is a list; the statement is about the work; the bio is a short narrative paragraph.
- Burying the recent and the reputable. Reverse chronological, always — and within a “Selected” list, lead with the strongest venues.
- Wrong file format. Send a PDF, named clearly (
Firstname-Lastname-CV-2026.pdf), unless the guidelines say otherwise. Never send an editable document a juror has to reformat.
Frequently asked questions
How long should an artist CV be?
As long as it needs to be and no longer. Emerging artists often fill half a page; mid-career artists run three to four pages. For a specific application, cut a one-to-two-page résumé from your full CV.
What’s the difference between an artist CV and an artist résumé?
The CV is your complete professional record. The résumé is a shorter version tailored to a single opportunity, trimmed to the most relevant exhibitions, residencies, and awards for that jury.
I’ve never had a solo show. What do I put on my CV?
Everything that genuinely counts: juried and graduate group exhibitions, artist-run and off-space shows, curated online exhibitions, residencies, small grants, workshops you’ve led, and relevant education. Leave out any section you can’t fill honestly — an omitted “Solo Exhibitions” heading is stronger than an invented one.
Should an artist CV include a photo or design?
No. The art world reads a CV as evidence, not as marketing. Use clean, typographic formatting with clear headings, no photo, no icons, and no colour.
How do I list a group exhibition versus a solo exhibition?
Give each its own section. Within each, use the format Year — Exhibition Title (italicised), Venue, City, Country, adding the curator’s name for significant shows. Once a section is long, retitle it “Selected.”
Where do I put residencies and grants on my CV?
Each gets its own dedicated section — Residencies, and Grants, Awards & Fellowships — below your exhibitions, each in reverse-chronological order.
Keep your CV moving
The best CVs are the ones that keep growing — which means the real work is applying. A strong, well-formatted CV is what turns an open call, a residency, or a grant from a long shot into a genuine possibility.
Browse current residencies, grants, and open calls on ArtInfoLand and put your new CV to work.
