Naar aanleiding van de antwoorden op een eerdere e-mail geschreven aan Contemporary Art Curator Magazine die niet bevredigend waren, vandaag opnieuw een (stevige) e-mail geschreven.

De laatste blog over het gebeuren, sloot ik af met “Wat mij betreft is hiermee de kous nog niet af”. In hetzelfde blogbericht gaf ik ook aan dat ik op mijn school nog zou kijken of het inderdaad, zoals werd gesuggereerd, aan mijn computer dan wel mijn internet verbinding lag. Dat blijkt niet het geval: ook op mijn school ervaar ik hetzelfde probleem, namelijk dat de laatste artikelen op de website van Contemporary Art Curator Magazine niet worden geüpdate.

Maar er is meer: mijn conclusie is dat, hoewel het magazine pretendeert kunstenaars te willen promoten, het vinden van een specifieke kunstenaar in het gunstigste geval 50% kans heeft en dit zou simpelweg 100% moeten zijn.

In een stevige en uitgebreide e-mail heb ik een en ander met behulp van schermafbeeldingen ondersteund. Een flink stuk leesvoer dus hieronder:

Dear ***,
Thank you for your reply and answers. I’ve some remarks about your answers. It’s not my intention to offend, but is meant as a constructive critique. I do hope and trust that you will read the next part in that light. 

About the personalized promotions: I’ve browsed through the emails I got from CAC, but it has never been mentioned in any of the emails, so I was unware of it. I got two emails (beside the invitation) from CAC with the subjects: “Application accepted” and “CAC Directory and Article”. So I’m glad I asked for it.
You also mention that I’ve to email my works to your organization when I decide to promote my work, but you already have work from me for the website interview. So why do I need to send more images, or do you mean that I may send other images not shown on the website?
 
About the Instagram feed on the website: I’m sorry to say, but when CAC claims to be – and I quote- “… an online contemporary art magazine…” and “… it is an international art platform designed to connect artists with art professionals”, it’s, in my opinion, odd that the Instagram feed (as being a huge eyecatcher these days) isn’t automatically refreshed. Even if it is due to the design of the website, I think those images could and must be altered manually every now and than. Artists pay for your services to get connected with art professionals and so all of the artist should get equal exposure, which apparently is not the case right now.
 
About the articles and interviews. Now it gets complicated and confusing and I’ll try to explain myself with a couple of screenshots. Beforehand I can say that it isn’t my computer nor my internetconnection that is causing the problem/confusing/misconception.

I know it’s a long piece of text, but I think it’s good for CAC to be aware of it.

I approach the website as being an art professional visitor who has never been on the website before. Say this art professional wants to search for new artists and especially photography/photographs.
Please also consider my point of view as an artist with the goal to be discovered by, for example, a gallery owner.

When I Google “Contemporary Art Curator Magazine” and click on the first hit ( http://www.contemporaryartcurator.com/contemporaryartcurator/) I’ll get this webpage:

And when clicking on the second hit ( http://www.contemporaryartcurator.com/), I get this webpage:

The first hit is the “About” page/link in the menu. The menu is for both pages the same: “About …. Contact”. Here you can choose out of three options from the artist directory. I will be found when clicking “Artist Directory R-Z”. Unfortunately it is impossible to search on this landingpage for “photography”, so as an art professional, I’ve to browse through all the three pages to find an artist with photography as his/her form of art.
From my point of view, the chance to be discovered is less than the artists who can be found from the first two links, as people tend to click from left to right and the average time of people visiting a website is about 3 1/2 minutes.
When I, as an art professional, have clicked on “Tjeerd Doosje”, I get the page http://www.contemporaryartcurator.com/tjeerd-doosje/ with my bio and five photos. Say that I want to read more about this, Tjeerd Doosje maybe an interview with him, there’s no link to this interview and hence this art professional will never see the other photos and artists answers to the questions.

Of course you can say: but there is a link to the Contemporary Art Curator Magazine Website! That’s right, but the link is not in the topmenu but in the webpage text and as a visitor I already assume that I’m on the the website, since the URL is http://www.contemporaryartcurator.com/contemporaryartcurator/ and beside that the Google search told me that I’m on the Magazine webpage:

Okay, let’s pretend that the art professional follows the other way, so he/she is clicking on the link mentioned before:

Now I get, what seems to be, an other website. The colorscheme is the same, but the top menu is gone or replaced by another menu and there’s the possibility to search.
When I scroll down on this page, I will see my name and interview, as you mentioned. When I do a search for “photography” my name and interview is a hit. But say I now want to see the bio of this Tjeerd Doosje, there’s no link to that particular page, which would be logical place.

Now lets use the fly-out menu instead of doing a search for photography (and this is what I mentioned and referred to in my email from yesterday).
I think most people will follow this way.
So from the fly-out menu I choose “Photography”.

The purpose or goal is the same: as an artist, I want to be found/discovered by an art professional. This is the complete page when I scroll down.

As you can see, the latest article is from July 4th, as I wrote in my email yesterday. My name and thus work is not shown. So the art professional will not find me, therefore I might miss an opportunity to showcase/exhibit in a gallery and perhaps income from selling my work.

Let’s try the other way around and click on Interview instead of Photography. Will I find the interview of Tjeerd Doosje?

Again, I show the complete webpage after scrolling down:

It’s a bit difficult to determine which article is the last post, but considering January 25th has yet to come, I assume the interview of December 20 must have been December 2016 and therefore the article of June 14th must be the last, as I wrote in my email yesterday.
The conclusion, however, is the same: my name and interview doesn’t show up, so the art professional will not see my work.
Also note, that when the art professional chooses for “Artist Directory” in the fly-out menu, he is (re)directed to the webpage which corresponds with the second hit from Google. At this moment he/she isn’t able to return to the Magazine page via a menu, but has to go back in his/her browser history.

With all this said, I can compute a chance of being found by a art professional, meaning that this person will be able to find both the interview and the bio in a logical way. That chance is a shocking 0%! The chance of finding only the bio but not the interview is 50% and the chance of finding only the interview is 25%. In my opinion these all must be 100%!
I explain the percentages by the following scheme:

I do hope I’ve made myself clear and once again this writing isn’t meant to be offending. As an artist I want to be found on your website and your organization claims to connect artists with art professionals. This can generate income and exposure for me (and all the other artists).
Unfortunately on the website this isn’t the case via the Instagram images, because they stay the same for more than three months.
It isn’t the case as well when following the links on the website: in the best case scenario it’s a 50% chance. Considering the amount of money each artist has paid and your organizations statement/goal, this percentage should and must be 100%.

I’ve spend a great amount of time in writing this down for you and I trust that you treat this email with the same care.

With kind regards,

Tjeerd Doosje

Ik ben zeer benieuwd hoe er op deze e-mail gereageerd zal worden. Gezien het feit dat op mijn vorige e-mail binnen een dag antwoord terug kwam, verwacht ik nu ook binnen een dag wel antwoord te ontvangen.

Wordt vervolgd.

Eerdere berichten over de publicatie:
Reactie op e-mail
Opnieuw (3e!) uitnodiging ontvangen
Publicatie op Instagram
Publicatie een feit
Foto’s en interview ingezonden
Toegelaten
Artist Bio verzonden
Kleine update
Opnieuw uitnodiging ontvangen
Uitnodiging ontvangen