Build Your Art Career

The Art Students League of New York’s Professional Practice program is designed for serious professional artists who wish to build the skills and community needed to support a sustainable studio practice in the arts.  

About the Program

Take your work to the next level

The Studio Practice Professional Pathways colloquium led by artist and curator Tommy White will serve as the anchor of the program. Tommy will act as a mentor and coach, helping each artist develop their work, make connections, and begin to take the needed steps toward a sustainable practice. Artists will have the opportunity to participate in critiques with and visit the studio of well-known contemporary artists and will leave the program with an actionable, achievable career plan.

Chart your path forward

In addition to the colloquium, participants will attend short-term workshops focused on specific topics related to the marketing and business of art, which are led by leaders in the field, and will also be open to artists outside the program.

Our day-long intensive symposiums are a chance to network with thoughtleaders, and build community with other professional artists. Programs will address issues critical to how artists survive, including understanding finances, taxes, recordkeeping, marketing, art law, estate planning, and more.

Benefits

Mentorship & critique
Tommy White will serve as a mentor to help you learn how to speak about your own work, and to coach you through creating an aspirational career plan, with actionable, achievable steps.
Better business skills
Learn best practices for accounting, taxes, pricing, archiving, estate planning, legal concerns, and more.
Content strategy for artists
Learn how to effectively build and connect with your audience through your digital portfolio, social media, and public speaking.
Writing artists statements
Learn to communicate your creative intentions and perspectives for viewers, curators, and collectors. Write an artist statement and elevator pitch that will build your career.
Pragmatic pathways to sustain a creative life
Learn ways to apply studio-based creativity to your daily living.
Create new career opportunities
Discover how to win financial support, dedicated time and space to create, and access to a supportive artistic community.
Show your work to art world professionals
Review your work with different art world professionals — including curators, dealers and other artists — who will provide constructive feedback and critique.
Find a nurturing community
Relationships with your cohort and instructors will introduce you to additional resources, mentorship, and opportunities to amplify your artistic endeavors.

Instructors

Tommy White

Tommy White is the recipient of a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, a Howard Foundation Fellowship, a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, a Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Award and a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant. His work has been exhibited in galleries and museums throughout North America, Europe and Asia, and has been reviewed and/or discussed in periodicals including Artforum, Art in America, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Art News, The Boston Globe, New York Magazine, Time Out New York and The Village Voice among others. He lives and works in New York City.

Sharon Louden

Sharon Louden wears many interchangeable hats: artist, educator, advocate, consultant, community builder, founder and director of the Institute for Sustained Creativity, and editor of the “Living and Sustaining a Creative Life” series of books. As a changemaker, Louden amplifies unheard voices and advances meaningful opportunities for artists across all disciplines toward sustaining their creative lives. As an artist, her work has evolved from using writing as a medium, to figuration then abstraction through her paintings and drawings, to creating many physical environments that involve an inclusive advocacy using a varied range of media.

Hannah Cole

Hannah Cole is a tax expert who specializes in working with self-employed people — artists, designers, therapists, wellness practitioners, consultants, and anyone running a mission-driven business on their own. Though she’s worked at a couple “buttoned-up” tax firms in New York, she loves bringing her tax skills to people doing work that matters. A long-time working artist with a high-level exhibition history, and a design nerd who worked in an NYC interactive design agency, the financial challenges of self-employed people are both relevant and personal to Hannah.

Robin Cembalest

Respected journalist, influential Instagrammer, and the former longtime editor of ARTnews, Robin Cembalest has built a specialty in professional training for the digital era. She teaches writing, social media, public speaking, and other essential skills across the art industry. Cembalest works as educator, consultant, coach, and mentor, helping institutions and individuals to communicate effectively and sharing her expertise on the changing shape of art media.