This guide is written from that reviewer side of the desk. It covers what to put on an artist website so a stranger can evaluate the work, then compares a few website builders using only what those vendors publish on their own pricing and product pages. Prices and plan limits change; always re-check the vendor page before you pay. Format, the portfolio builder highlighted for Unjica’s affiliate plan, is still pending approval at the time of writing, so every Format and Squarespace link below is a plain editorial link, not a tracked referral.
What galleries and open calls actually ask for
Submission packs vary, but the same documents recur. Five Points Center for the Visual Arts asks for contact details, at least ten consistent JPEG images, an artist statement, a current CV or resume, and an inventory list with title, date, medium, dimensions and price for each piece. Pen + Brush asks for a portfolio of six to twelve works, an artist statement pasted into the form, a professional CV as a PDF, and high-resolution images (its visual-art page specifies about 300 dpi, JPEG/TIFF/EPS, roughly 1500 × 2100 pixels, and a minimum JPEG size of 800 KB). The Leslie Powell Gallery asks for up to ten high-resolution JPEGs (at least 1920 pixels on the longest side), title, medium, dimensions and year for each work, an artist statement of no more than 300 words, a CV, and a short cover note.
Those rules are not Unjica’s invention. They are what specific organisations publish for their own programmes. Your website should make the same materials easy to find without forcing a curator to dig through stories or highlights. A practical pattern is: a clear home or selected-works view; individual artwork pages; a page for CV and exhibitions; a short statement; and a contact method that works on a phone.
Build the site around individual artworks
One page per artwork is the difference between a mood board and a submission-ready portfolio. On each work page, show a clean image of the piece and state the title, year, medium, dimensions and availability (for sale, NFS, or already placed). Five Points’ inventory requirement and Leslie Powell’s description fields both assume that information travels with the image. If a work is an installation or sculpture, note installation needs the way those calls request them.
Keep the photography consistent. Pen + Brush states that photographs must be clear, centred and high quality, and that unfinished work is not accepted for its programme. You do not need every open call’s exact pixel count on the public site, but you do need images sharp enough that a reviewer can see surface and edge. Store print-ready masters offline; serve web-sized derivatives on the site so pages stay fast.
Group work into series only when the series is real. A “selected works” set of eight to twelve strong pieces is usually more useful to a first-time visitor than an archive of everything you have ever made. Keep older or weaker work in a separate archive page, or omit it until you can stand behind it in a room with a curator.
CV, statement, biography and contact
Treat the CV as a document someone might print. Lead with exhibitions, education and relevant residencies; keep non-art jobs brief unless they explain the practice. Host a PDF download and a short HTML version so the page still works if the file fails to open. di Rosa asks for the CV or resume as a PDF attachment alongside the website link; Pen + Brush requires a professional CV upload. Your site should not be the only place that file lives, but it should never be missing.
Keep the artist statement short enough to read once. Leslie Powell caps statements at 300 words and asks for approach, process and inspiration. Avoid a second essay disguised as a homepage manifesto. A separate biography in the third person can help press and open-call forms that ask for both; Five Points lists biography as optional, while Evanston Art Center’s exhibition guidelines treat biography and statement as distinct fields.
Contact must be boring and reliable: an email address that you check, optionally a studio location at city level, and a note on whether you take commissions or studio visits. Hide nothing important behind a contact form that never sends. If you sell prints or editions, link to that shop from the site rather than mixing every SKU into the exhibition portfolio. Unjica’s guide to selling art as prints online covers digitisation, files and print-on-demand; the portfolio site’s job is to present the practice, then send interested buyers to the shop.
Choosing a builder: Format, Squarespace and a free option
You can hand-code a site, use a general website platform, or use a builder aimed at creatives. The comparison below is factual and limited to vendor-published plan details checked on 5 November 2026. It is not a ranking, and it does not use affiliate tracking links.
Format markets itself as a portfolio website tool for creatives, with selling, client galleries and workflow features on higher plans. On Format’s pricing page, the site offered a free trial described as two weeks with no credit card required. The Basic plan was listed at $4 per month when billed annually, or $14 when billed monthly, with 4 website pages and 70 high-resolution images. The Pro plan was listed with unlimited pages, 1500 high-resolution images, 100 GB storage, a free custom domain for the first year, and a commission-free online store limited to 15 products; the page showed a normal annual price of $24 per month and a first-year promotional annual rate during a “Cyber November” campaign. Pro Plus was listed with unlimited high-resolution images, 1 TB storage, 120 hosted video minutes, priority support, and a store limit of 1000 products, with a normal annual price of $36 per month and a matching promotional first-year rate on the same campaign. Those promotional figures will expire; use the live pricing table when you decide.
Squarespace is a general website platform with portfolio templates. Its pricing FAQ states that Squarespace does not offer a free plan, that every site starts with a 14-day free trial with no credit card required, and that annual website plans include one year of free domain registration on available domains. On the EU pricing display checked the same day (amounts shown with estimated VAT), website plans were labelled Basic, Core and Advanced, with monthly and cheaper annual per-month rates (Basic about €18.30 monthly or €13.42 per month billed annually; Core about €29.28 or €20.74; Advanced about €51.24 or €35.38). Squarespace’s US dollar list prices on the same property appeared as $15, $24 and $42 in structured price data. Confirm the currency and tax treatment for your account before comparing to Format’s US-dollar table.
If you need a no-cost starting point, Portfoliobox publishes a Free plan at €0 with no time limit and no credit card, limited to 30 images and 25 pages on a Portfoliobox subdomain, plus paid Personal and Professional plans (on the yearly toggle checked the same day: Personal at €7.9 per month and Professional at €13.9 per month). Free plans are useful for testing structure; gallery reviewers who need a custom domain and a larger body of work will usually expect you to move off the tightest free limits.
Pick the builder that can support individual artwork pages, a CV file, a statement page and a custom domain you control. A cheaper plan that forces everything onto one scrolling page will fight the submission checklist above. Once the structure is right, connect a domain you own, set a simple privacy and cookie notice if you use analytics, and test the site on a phone the way a curator will.
Keep the site usable for humans who are in a hurry
Fast pages, readable type and working links matter more than animated transitions. Name image files calmly (many calls ask for LastName_Title patterns) and keep alt text factual. Do not autoplay video with sound. Do not require an account to view the work. Do not bury contact behind a chatbot.
Revisit the site before each open call. Replace sold work’s availability, update the CV after a show, and remove experiments you no longer want associated with your name. The same discipline that Unjica’s artists hub and museum and gallery coverage apply to public stories applies to your own URL: the reader should leave knowing what the work is, who made it, and how to follow up. For context on how collector and gallery relationships can go wrong when paperwork and expectations diverge, see Unjica’s report on the Alison Jacques Gallery dispute involving an artist’s estate and first-time collectors.
A portfolio website will not replace relationships, but it can stop a serious enquiry from dying in a broken link. Build for the person who has ten minutes, a slow connection and a checklist that looks a lot like the ones cited above.
