Preparing an Arts and Cultural CV or Resume

An arts and cultural CV is a wider document than an artist CV. It records exhibitions and performances, but it also records the work: the gallery coordinating, the festival programming, the teaching, the board seats, the jury service, the writing. Public funders ask for it in that form, and so do arts organizations hiring for administrative, curatorial, and educational roles, where a one-page employment resume tells a committee almost nothing about whether you know the field.

That is what this guide covers. For the artist-CV conventions themselves, how to order the sections, how an exhibition line should read, what CAA format looks like, the artist CV guide is the reference. What follows is the fuller document: what belongs on it when your practice includes paid work in the sector, and how to present it to a hiring committee as well as to a jury.

When you need one

This document is what gets asked for when you apply for grants and funding, submit to galleries, residencies, or exhibitions, nominate yourself for a selection committee or advisory board, propose a public art project, or apply for a teaching position or an arts administration role. Browse open programs and calls and you will see the same request phrased half a dozen ways.

Your CV is the document people read before they meet you. It records what you have done and where your practice sits in the field.

How it differs from a resume

Unlike a traditional resume, an arts and cultural CV is built around creative practice and cultural contribution rather than employment history. It is a living document that grows with your career and should be updated as it does, not rewritten per application.

The one place that distinction softens is the arts job market. A hiring committee for a gallery coordinator or a program manager is reading for responsibilities and outcomes, which a pure exhibition list does not supply. Keep the master CV complete, then produce a focused version that foregrounds the work experience and teaching sections when you apply for a role. The artist resume builder exists for exactly that shorter, role-facing version.

Whichever version you send, the document should present who you are and what you do, including your role and field of practice; demonstrate your training, experience, and achievements; list your public presentations and professional activities; and show your contributions to the arts community.

Basic information

Start with the essentials: your full name and any professional name or alias you use, a link to your arts and cultural website, and links to relevant social accounts such as Instagram or LinkedIn.

Leave out personal identifiers. That means no social insurance number or social security number, no personal phone number, email, or mailing address unless specifically requested, no date of birth or age, and no marital status or comparable personal detail.

Summary or artist statement

Open with a short summary, no more than 250 words, that tells your story and lets a reader place your practice quickly. Useful things to cover include the type of arts and cultural work you do, your discipline and the themes or focus of your activity, how you came to it, where your specialized skills and knowledge sit, turning points or work you are proud of, the communities you work with or the public you want to reach, and how your practice, community, or region shapes the work.

This section is not an artist statement and it is not a bio, though it borrows from both. How to write an artist statement covers the piece of writing about your work, and how to write an artist bio covers the third-person introduction that galleries and press offices ask for separately.

Arts and cultural training and learning

Training in the arts takes many forms, and this section is written to recognize the informal ones alongside the credentials.

Formal education covers college or university degrees (BFA, MFA, BA, MA, PhD), post-baccalaureate programs, certificate programs, and continuing education courses.

Informal and alternative learning covers self-directed study through online courses or tutorials, webinars and workshops, apprenticeships and on-the-job learning, mentorships with established artists, learning under the guidance of an Elder, family member, or community member, masterclasses and intensives, and residency programs with an educational component.

For each entry, record when the training took place, what you learned, where you studied, who taught or mentored you, and any certification or credential earned.

Artistic and cultural work presented to the public

This is usually the longest section. List public presentations of your artistic and cultural work: recordings, releases, and performances; presentations, exhibitions, installations, screenings, and curatorial projects; published work and readings; public art installations; online exhibitions and digital presentations; open studios and studio visits.

Keep listings concise but informative. For each, include as much of the following as applies: when the work was presented (year, or month and year), the title of the work, the type of presentation, your role, and where it was presented and by whom, including the venue, city, and curator where relevant.

A few conventions govern how these lines read:

• Use reverse chronological order, most recent first
• Italicize exhibition and work titles
• Indicate clearly when you received an artist fee ("paid artist fee")
• Note when work was selected by a curator ("curated by [Name]")
• Group self-initiated work under a heading such as "Independent Projects" or "Self-Organized Exhibitions"
• For group exhibitions, list your name among the participating artists
• Include both physical and online exhibitions

Building an Artsume CV automates the mechanical parts of that list: exhibition titles are italicized, entries sort chronologically, and formatting stays consistent across the document. Creating your CV walks through the process, and portfolio best practices covers the images that accompany it.

Artists and community collaboration activities

This section covers activity that brings artists and community members together as creative partners, which grant panels read closely and hiring committees read as evidence of public-facing capability. List what you have organized, worked on, or taken part in: community art projects, public workshops and educational programs, collaborative installations, social practice projects, community-based residencies, participatory events, and arts programming for underserved communities.

For each, note when it took place, what it was, your role (lead artist, collaborator, facilitator), who the participating community members or partners were, where it happened, and what came of it.

Arts and cultural work experience

Here is where an arts and cultural CV diverges most sharply from an artist CV, and where an arts job application lives or dies. This section covers roles you were contracted or hired to do within the sector.

Artistic roles include creators, designers, and performers; artistic directors, producers, curators, and programmers; creative directors and lead artists.

Administrative and support roles include general managers and arts administrators, marketing, communications, and fundraising staff, gallery assistants and coordinators, and studio managers.

Professional services include service providers and consultants, critics, writers, translators, and editors, technicians and production staff, agents and artist managers, and arts educators and workshop facilitators.

Record when you were employed, what the role was, who you worked for, where, and what your key responsibilities or achievements were. On the master CV, keep this factual and brief. On a version aimed at a hiring committee, this is the section to expand, because "Gallery Coordinator, 2022-2024" answers none of the questions a committee is actually asking.

Additional sections

These cover the rest of a working life in the arts.

Teaching and mentorships

University or college teaching positions, workshop facilitation, private instruction, mentoring emerging artists, guest lectures, and artist talks. If teaching is a meaningful part of your income rather than an occasional engagement, teaching art as income covers how those roles are structured and what they pay.

Volunteer experience

Board positions with arts organizations, volunteer work with arts nonprofits, community arts initiatives, and arts advocacy. Board service in particular reads as sector knowledge on a job application.

Residencies

Artist-in-residence programs, research residencies, international residencies, and self-directed residencies. Residency applications ask for a CV shaped slightly differently from this one, and what programs actually want to see on a residency CV covers those differences; how to apply for artist residencies covers the rest of the application.

Artist talks, presentations, and articles

Public lectures and artist talks, conference presentations, published articles or essays, podcast appearances, and panel discussions.

Awards and community recognition

Grants and fellowships, awards and prizes, honorable mentions, community recognition or honors, and competition wins. Grant lines carry unusual weight because they represent a panel of your peers having assessed the work; the grant application guide covers how those decisions get made.

Assessment and adjudication

Serving on grant juries, reviewing applications, sitting on curatorial selection committees, and peer review panels. This section is short for most artists and disproportionately persuasive when it is not.

Media coverage

Press mentions and reviews, interviews, feature articles, video profiles, and radio or television appearances. If this section is thin, getting press coverage as an artist covers how coverage actually gets generated.

Memberships and affiliations

Professional associations, artist collectives and cooperatives, arts organizations, and advisory boards.

For every entry across these sections, record the date or period, what the activity was, your role, where it took place, and any detail that gives it scale, such as an award amount or a publication name.

Formatting

Use a clean professional font, Times New Roman, Garamond, or Helvetica, at 11 to 12 point, and keep the formatting identical throughout. Order every section in reverse chronological order, italicize exhibition and work titles, and use one date format consistently, whether that is "2024" or "March 2024". Keep entries concise, proofread carefully, and submit as a PDF.

Avoid prices or sales information, first-person language such as "I created", personal details unrelated to your practice, decorative fonts, and inconsistent spacing. Those are the errors that make a strong CV look careless at a glance, which is all the time it gets on a first pass.

If you would rather not manage the formatting details yourself, build your CV on Artsume and export to PDF whenever you need it. Free artist CV maker covers what the free tier includes.

Keeping it current

An arts and cultural CV is a living document, which only works if you treat it as one. Update it immediately after finishing a project or receiving recognition rather than reconstructing dates a year later. Review it quarterly. Keep a complete master version, then tailor focused versions for specific applications. And keep accurate records of dates, titles, and collaborators as you go, because those are the details that disappear first.

Artsume builds and maintains the document online. It:

• Provides a structured format that follows industry standards (including CAA standards)
• Automatically formats your entries consistently
• Allows you to update your CV anytime, anywhere
• Generates professional PDF exports with one click
• Links your CV directly to your portfolio and applications
• Ensures your CV is always current and ready to share
• Lets you apply to opportunities with your CV attached automatically

Final tips

Only include what you can verify. Be selective about what earns a line as the document grows. Keep the formatting identical throughout, give entries enough specificity to convey scale and impact, and proofread as though the reader is looking for a reason to stop.

Your CV is the record of a working life in the arts. Present it carefully. It gets read more closely than you think.

Adapted from the Canada Council for the Arts' official guide on preparing an arts and cultural CV. We've expanded their framework to help artists build professional CVs for all types of opportunities.