Creating your CV

Your CV is the record of your career: where you studied, where you've shown, what you've won, and where your work lives. On Artsume you build it line by line rather than uploading a finished file, and every line is formatted to CAA (College Art Association) standards, the convention galleries, grants, and juries expect.

The CV is a tab on your profile. Open Profile, then switch to the CV tab. Everyone gets one, whether or not you make work, so a curator or an educator builds a CV here the same way an artist does. See Artists and arts professionals.

CV sections

Artsume organizes your CV into the standard sections a CV uses. You don't need lines in every one. Include what's relevant to your practice, and the empty ones stay out of the way.

• Education: degrees, diplomas, and formal training
• Professional Experience: teaching positions, employment, and professional roles
• Exhibitions: solo, group, two-person, and selected shows
• Curatorial Projects: exhibitions and projects you curated
• Projects: client and commissioned projects you delivered
• Awards, Grants & Fellowships
• Collections: public, corporate, and private collections holding your work
• Artist Residencies
• Commissions: public, corporate, and private
• Lectures, Presentations & Workshops
• Publications as Author: articles, essays, and books you wrote
• Bibliography: reviews and press written about your work
• Professional Service: committee work, board membership, and jury service
• Gallery Affiliations

If you've picked professional roles in What you do, the order shifts to put your kind of work first, and Professional Experience is renamed Positions.

Adding lines

The dashed Add a CV line row sits above your CV sections. It opens a two-step picker and reaches every section:

1. Choose what you're adding from a grid of cards (Exhibition, Award or grant, Residency, Project, and so on). This step also offers an Import from a CV file launcher, covered below.
2. Fill in the form. A Back control lets you re-pick, and Add to CV saves it.

Every section header also carries its own Add a CV line button, which skips straight to that section's form.

Fill in the fields for that kind of line: year, title, venue or institution, location, and any details particular to it, such as an exhibition's type and curator or an award's granting organization. A preview labeled Preview · how it appears on your CV sits underneath and updates as you type, so you can match the CAA format before you save.

Example

2025

Tide Lines, Harbourline Arts Centre, Halifax, NS, Canada, Group, Catalogue

Venue, institution, and organization fields search Artsume as you type. Picking a listed organization links the line to them and fills in the location for you. If they're not on Artsume, select Add "your text" and the name saves as plain text.

Lines sort themselves. Most sections run newest first by year. Collections sort by collector name and Gallery Affiliations by gallery name, both alphabetically, which is what those sections conventionally do.

Import an existing CV

If you already have a CV, you don't have to retype it. Open the Add a CV line row and choose Import from a CV file. On mobile, an Import CV button also sits in the action bar on the CV tab.

1. Upload or paste. Upload a PDF or Word document (.pdf or .docx, up to 10 MB) and it starts reading on its own, or switch to Paste Text, paste your CV's contents, and select Parse CV. Artsume reads the document and pulls out the lines.
2. Review by section. The parsed lines appear grouped into your CV sections. Go through them and choose what to keep: tick lines one by one or use Select all per section, edit anything that came through wrong, and match organizations to their Artsume profiles. Lines that need attention are flagged, as are ones you already have. If your document included profile details such as your About text, each one offers Use imported or Keep current.
3. Import. The button names what it will do, reading Import 5 lines or Import profile details. Select it and everything you picked lands in place.

If you leave partway through, Artsume saves a draft on that device and offers Continue from last import when you come back. The draft is discarded after 24 hours.

You can run five imports an hour. That is generous for a real CV and it stops a stuck document from being retried forever.

What the CV export adds

The CV tab holds only your CV lines. Your About text lives on the About tab, and your CV download opens with it. See Creating your profile.

The same Edit About dialog holds Birth year and Birthplace. Filled in, they render as a discreet line the way an artist CV opens, for example "Born 1990 in Toronto". Leave either blank to keep it off your CV.

Linking projects to CV lines

If you make work, every form lets you attach projects from your portfolio, so a line connects to the pieces behind it: the works shown in an exhibition, made during a residency, or acquired into a collection. The row belongs to the artist side, so a professional-only account does not see it.

In any form, find Link projects (optional) and pick the relevant ones. On your CV, the line then carries thumbnails, and someone reading it can see the work itself. Each line can also carry one image of its own, which is a separate field and has nothing to do with featuring the line.

You link from the CV side, here in the form. To add and organize the projects themselves, see Building your portfolio.

Verified by organizations

Organizations you've worked with can vouch for the lines on your CV. A credit the organization itself has confirmed carries weight with a jury.

Lines can show three kinds of organization involvement:

• Verified. The organization confirmed the line. It gets a blue check mark. Hover or focus the mark to read "Verified by [organization]". Select the linked organization name to open its profile preview.
• Disputed. The organization flagged the line as inaccurate. It shows a "Disputed by [organization]" badge, and a banner appears when you open it to edit, including any note they left. Editing and saving clears the dispute, and they can then confirm it again to restore the check mark.
• Proposed. An organization has suggested a new line for you. Proposals appear in a Pending proposals from organizations strip, showing exactly how the line would read. Choose Accept to add it, or Decline, where you can leave an optional note explaining why.

You don't need to ask. A line with a linked organization sends them a request to confirm it when you save it. A small clock at the end of the line shows the request is open. Open the line to withdraw the request, or to ask again after a decline. A proposed line only lands on your CV if you accept it. Your artists covers the organization side.

Controlling what's public

Visibility is set per line, not per section. Inside every form is a Shown on your profile switch, with the note Turn off to keep this line just for you. Turn it off and the line stays in your CV: it still appears in your downloaded PDF and can be used in applications, but not on your public page, where it's marked Hidden from your profile for you alone. There's no panel for hiding whole sections. You decide line by line.

Download your CV

When a gallery or grant asks for your CV as a file, use Download CV. On desktop it's in the ··· menu at the top of your profile. On mobile, it's in the action bar on the CV tab. Artsume generates a clean, CAA-formatted PDF ready to send or print. That's the only export format. Your CV lives on Artsume and updates in place, so there's no separate Word or plain-text file to keep in sync.

Verification

When an organization confirms one of your lines, your profile earns the verified seal. Getting verified covers how it works, and why editing a confirmed line pauses it.

Next steps

• Building your portfolio: add the projects you link to your CV lines
• Applying to programs: put your CV to work in applications
• Your artists: the organization side of CV verification
• Best practices: presentation tips for a CV that reads well