How to tour an exhibition
I was recently awarded the Developing Your Creative Practice grant by Arts Council England to learn how to tour my exhibition “Shemza Digital: Across Generations”. This was created in collaboration with Wolverhampton Art Gallery and exhibited there from 14th January to 16th of April 2023 - you can find more information about the exhibition here.
As part of the project, I received comprehensive consultancy from international touring exhibition expert Adam Sanders from Sanders Exhibition Services and mentoring by Alanna Davidson and Tim Pethick from Nomad Exhibitions about touring sustainably.
In this blog post I have compiled some helpful tips for what you would need to prepare in order to tour your own exhibition. The article assumes that you have already created your exhibition and its concept and that you are now looking to tour the exhibition to multiple venues.
Image: Visitors interacting at the Shemza Digital: Across Generations exhibition held at Wolverhampton Art Gallery.
What you need to tour an exhibition
In order to tour your exhibition you need to compile the following information and documents so that your partners are able to understand what your exhibition contains, what it looks like and who it is aimed at.
What does your touring exhibition contain?
These documents help your future partner to understand exactly what they are hiring from you and what the technical requirements are for the installation and shipping.
Object list:
Your object list is a list of every artwork/item that is included in the exhibition. For each artwork you should include the following information;
Artist name
Title of the artwork
Date created
Dimensions
Medium
Artwork label text
Image of the artwork (or video if relevant)
Technical requirements and installation document link if needed.
Packing list:
Your packing list is for the shipping of the exhibition, it should include a list of all the crates and display cases etc. that will be transported when your exhibition tours. In order to tour an exhibition all your artworks need to be packed into wooden cases so that they are safe to transport to multiple venues. This is a large upfront cost and must be taken into account when planning to tour your exhibition. Your packing list should include;
Each artwork
The dimensions and weight of each crate
Any extra objects
Condition Report:
A condition report should be created for all the artworks in your exhibition and they should be checked by you before leaving on the tour. A draft condition report document should be provided by you to the venues in the tour and the works should be checked by the venue and their team on arrival at the venue and when they leave in order to ensure correct records in case of damage etc.
Condition report examples can be found here: https://collectionstrust.org.uk/resource/condition-report-examples/
Image: Installation shot of Shemza Digital: Across Generations exhibition at Wolverhampton Art Gallery.
What does your touring exhibition look like and who is it for?
Pictures of the exhibition and artworks included in it
Selling Points (interactive artworks, original archival material, digital art and workshops)
Intended Audiences (who is the exhibition aimed at? Is it wide-reaching?)
Visitor numbers (if shown previously)
Press release
Press coverage (if shown previously)
LIcensing and merchandising information (for postcards, prints, etc.)
The logistics of touring an exhibition
Before you contact your future partners, you will need to take logistics into account - and not only shipping and handling, but also a whole plethora of roles that you may not be able to fulfill on your own. The roles you will require to tour an exhibition are:
Project manager: Oversee the project and liaise with the venues to sort out the contracts, etc.
Marketing: Help promote the exhibition, generate/edit marketing materials, and put your exhibition in front of the people who may want to become your touring partners.
Shipping & Handling: You will need to appoint a shipping company who will be dealing with the shipping of the artworks from one venue to the next. Some fine art transport agents are;
Freelance shipping agents or registrars can be found in the UK Registrars group.
Installers: Either the museum will pay or have installers in house or you will need to have trained a freelance install team who is going to be installing your exhibitions at every venue.
Another important thing to sort out is the contract between you and the venue/s. An example contract can be found here and adapted to suit your needs.
Image: Anwar Jalal Shemza work at Shemza Digital: Across Generations exhibition at Wolverhampton Art Gallery.
Time to market your touring exhibition
Before you contact your partners it is a good idea to create an overview document of the exhibition to highlight the best parts of the show and condense all the in-depth information that you have created above into small bite-size chunks. This document is called a Touring Exhibition Pack and should include the following information:
Strong cover image - title of exhibition and partner names and logos
Intro text - what is your exhibition about
Who the exhibition is for - age groups, families etc…
Key educational topics
Exhibition layout, overview, space required
Images of the exhibition and artworks included
Exhibition team and partner bios
Press cuttings
Testimonials
Previous partners and logos
Venue requirements
Contact details - who to get in touch with to arrange a meeting about hosting the exhibition.
Once you have created this document it’s time to market your Exhibition! In order to do that, you make use of your own marketing contacts and could also join different events and groups such as the ones below;
ICP
These are all excellent options for networking and often have newsletters in which you can advertise your exhibition. I recently went to the GEM conference and it was a very positive experience!
You can also meet people on LinkedIn as it is good for networking and finding out who you may want to reach out to over email. Once you’ve got some potential partners selected and you’ve secured your meetings with them, you will have to do site or online visits. At this point, you might need to advise the potential partners on how to make the most of the exhibition for their space.
Hopefully by now you will have piqued someone’s interest and you can get into the contract stage! At this point I advise you to get some professional advice to best protect your interests.
Image: Visitors interact at Shemza Digital: Across Generations exhibition at Wolverhampton Art Gallery.
Conclusion
My main takeaway from this learning process is that as a single artist I would need to have a team around me in order to be able to make this work. It's definitely not a one-person job! However, it’s an amazing opportunity to find these networks and to be in touch with potential touring partners, so if you’re interested in touring your exhibitions I would encourage you to compile all the information and get talking with people and networking to try and make it happen.