Ready to take your art career to the next level? Join gallerist Christine O’Donnell and Sima Schloss for an essential guide to navigating the professional art world. They will demystify the submission process, covering exactly what galleries look for, how to build a winning professional toolkit, and discuss strategies for creating successful artist-gallery partnerships. Learn to define your practice, make a powerful first approach, and work confidently towards securing exhibition opportunities.

Bios

Christine O’Donnell is the director of Beacon Gallery in SOWA as well as founder and Executive Director of Show Up (Boston), a nonprofit contemporary art. She is a curator, art historian, writer, consultant, and lifelong educator. Her knowledge of the commercial art world is formed by a decade as educator and working in advertising/marketing, and living in France, Hong Kong, and Singapore.

She is a member of the Advisory Council at ICA (Boston), Boston Art Dealers Association, and board member of Arlington International Film Festival and Boston Art Review magazine. She has been curator in residence at Boston Center for the Arts, a juror for multiple exhibitions, invited speaker at School of Museum of Fine Arts and Harvard Education Portal and Service Corps of Retired Executives.

Education: BA in French, Holy Cross; MA in Teaching, Tufts University, MA in Art History, UK’s Open University; and studied at Harvard Business School’s Social Enterprise Initiative’s Upswell Forum for nonprofit leaders in communities of color.

Sima Schloss, an artist since childhood, earned her MFA in Painting and developed a distinctive style of gestural figuration. Her career took off with her capstone exhibition at the Lehman College Art Gallery in the Bronx which paved the way for numerous solo and group exhibitions, as well as art fairs across the United States. Recent showcases include Temple Gallery in New York, Show Up Gallery in Boston, Warnes Contemporary in Brooklyn, and the Scope Art Fair in Miami. Her solo exhibition, “On Empathy,” received coverage in The Boston Art Review, while her works have been featured in numerous publications including JellyBucket Magazine, Time Out New York, and Art Ascent Magazine. She has had artist residencies in Italy, Ireland, France, Greece, Finland, Colorado, Vermont, and New York.

Education: MFA (Painting), Lehman College, Bronx, NY; MS (TESOL), City College of New York; BA (Fine Art), Roger Williams University, Bristol, RI.