myartspace.com - the first true online community for emerging and established artists

In order for a website to be considered a social network or online community, it must have a few basic requirements:

- the site must have a critical mass of active, participating membership
- the membership of the community should be relatively diverse - it should include the likes of artist, photographers, art buyers, curators, galleries, museums
- the site must provide community-centric communications capability - such as messaging between members, rankings, commentary, reviews, blogging
- The site must have a way that user-generated content and commentary can be the primary focal point of the site.

All too often, sites that are really eCommerce sites (where artists simply display their works with price tags) are billed as online communities. These sites are about trying to connect an artist to a buyer, which is an important part of supporting the art ecosystem, but this is a myopic view of what makes a community. A community is concerned with the common good of its people. A community wrestles with difficult topics, works on educating its membership, and provide access to lots of incredibly important information. Most people believe that a community should provide free and open access to it; those charging a monthly admission fee to be part of a community sound more like a landlord or hotel.

myartspace (www.myartspace.com) is a rapidly growing online arts community. It attempts to address the needs of the broad base of users in the art community - artists, photographers, art buyers, corporations, art critics, curators, gallery owners and more.

There are a few important features of myartspace.com:

First, the site has a comprehensive collection of features for artists to upload, organize, and display their works. Membership is free and artists have almost unlimited space to upload their works. They can then organize those into groupings (know as portfolios) and then galleries (which are collections of portfolios). The artist can control the presentation of the gallery, including any additional voice, audio narration and video that goes along with the gallery.

Second, myartspace promotes opportunities for its community members. In the summer of 2006 the South of France competition kicked off. With more than 700 submissions globally to the competition, 4 winners were chosen and received a trip to the South of France for a week. In early January myartspace will be launching its next major global competition - New York, New York 2007. Once again, 50 finalists will be selected and 4 winners will be chosen. They will be flown to New York City, wined and dined, and attend their opening of their show in a Chelsea gallery. More details can be found at myartspace contests (www.myartspace.com/contests).


Third, the new version of myartspace coming out in January is fully equipped with rich communication tools - messaging between users, ratings of artists and paintings by the community, reviews and commentary by the community. Shortly after the release, each community member will also be given their own blog that they can build as part of their free membership.

Fourth, the colourful and fascinating members in the community are highlighted. The myartspace blog (www.myartspace.com/blog) has one of the largest collections of online interviews with emerging artists in the world. These interviews are also covered in myartspace interviews (www.myartspace.com/interviews).

Daily news on the arts is made free with myartspace news (www.myartspace.com/news). This is a great way for all in the arts community to keep up with the latest happenings in the art world.

The myartspace global directory (http://globaldirectoy.myartspace.com) allows artists to enter themselves in a global directory to raise their awareness level. The global directory also has galleries, museums and many other resources for artists.

Of course, an online community needs a place to exchange goods and services. The myartspace classifieds (http://classifieds.myartspace.com) allow this on a global basis across most major cities.

It is the collective whole of interconnected parts that make a true online arts community.
www.myartspace.com is the freshest, fastest growing online arts community.