A virtual gallery can be a great way to advertise your artwork and educate people in far-reaching places. However, if you’re not familiar with web design, you might not know how to create a virtual gallery.
The good news is that designing your own virtual art gallery is pretty straightforward. Even better, there’s a diverse range of website-building tools you can use, depending on your unique needs and preferences. Then, you can advertise and even sell your artwork online. 🎨
📚 In this post, we’ll discuss the benefits of putting your art gallery online. Then, we’ll show you how to create a virtual gallery in a few simple steps.
Finally, we’ll share a selection of tools to help you get the job done. Let’s dive right in! 🤿
Why create a virtual gallery
Before we explain how to create a virtual gallery, let’s discuss some benefits of doing so.
For starters, a virtual art gallery is much more convenient than a physical one. You may not have the budget to rent out a gallery space for more than just a few days.
Similarly, your potential audience may not be able to travel to see your show. This makes it a great alternative on multiple accessibility fronts. What’s more, you can likely charge a lower entry fee for your gallery (or even make it free) since your return on investment (ROI) for a virtual gallery will be much greater.
Additionally, a virtual art gallery can help grow your reputation as an artist (or gallerist). That’s because it broadens your potential audience from people in a single town to anyone with an internet connection. Similarly, if your gallery is for education or entertainment, you can reach tons more art fans and students this way.
Lastly, if you’re advertising your art in order to sell it, this can help massively boost your sales. You may just need to consider shipping fees when determining prices.
How to create a virtual gallery (in 4 steps)
Now that you know some of the benefits of creating a virtual gallery, we’re going to discuss how you can create one in a few simple steps!
- Choose art to display
- Take photos of your artwork
- Select a platform to host your virtual gallery
- Advertise your virtual art gallery
1. Choose art to display 📺
The first step to building your own virtual gallery is choosing what artwork to display. How you make your selection will depend on the purpose of your virtual art gallery.
As an example, if your goal is strictly to educate or entertain, you may include as many pieces of art as you wish. On the other hand, if you want to sell your work, you should only include pieces that are currently available.
When selecting art pieces to include in your virtual gallery, you’ll also want to think about the mode of art you’re working with. For instance, if the gallery in your short-term brick-and-mortar location features a vintage television set that displays supplementary video, it might not be necessary to include that.
2. Take photos of your artwork 📸
Once you’ve selected the appropriate art pieces for your virtual gallery, you’ll then need to take photos of them. Of course, you’ll want these photos to be of high quality. This way, your audience can get the best viewing experience.
Be sure to consider lighting, shadows, clarity, etc. Additionally, it’s best to use a professional-grade camera. If possible, you may even want to hire an expert photographer to take these photos.
For any three-dimensional items, such as sculptures, you’ll want to make sure to take 360-degree photos. Similarly, if you plan on creating an entire virtual tour, you’ll need larger-scale images of your entire gallery.
3. Select a platform to host your virtual gallery 🖼️
Next, you’ll need to select a platform to host your virtual gallery. In most cases, you’ll want to build a gallery website.
When it comes to tools, there are a lot of different options you can use to create your site. You may want to go with a website builder or a content management system (CMS) like WordPress:
Which platform you use will likely depend on a few key factors, including your budget, skill level, and the size of your project. Certain platforms are free but require web hosting. On the other hand, some are “all-in-one” paid solutions.
If you’re an experienced web developer or have the resources to hire one, you might consider creating your own web application. However, this likely won’t be a realistic option for most people.
4. Advertise your virtual art gallery 📢
Once your virtual art gallery is complete, the last step is to advertise it. Otherwise, you’ll likely have a hard time getting the word out.
You could start by ensuring your website is optimized to appear in search results. This way, you can get organic traffic for free. When it comes to a media-rich gallery, you’ll want to make sure to prioritize search engine optimization (SEO) for images.
Additionally, there are tons of tools to help you manage a social media marketing strategy. If you run a larger business, you’ll also likely want to leverage email and content marketing.
Now that you know the general steps to creating a virtual art gallery, here are some tools that can help you get the job done!
WordPress
WordPress is an excellent platform you can use to create a virtual gallery website. That’s because it’s beginner-friendly and highly customizable. Moreover, you can launch your website quickly thanks to pre-designed website templates called WordPress themes.
Even better, you can extend the functionality of any WordPress website using plugins. In fact, you can even use the WP VR plugin to help you upload 360 images and even create a virtual tour:
Additionally, you can use the WooCommerce plugin to transform your site into an online store and easily sell your artwork.
WordPress is completely free, but you’ll need to choose a web hosting company and purchase a plan in order to put your site online (unless you use WordPress.com).
ARTDEX
If you’re looking for a straightforward platform for your virtual gallery, you might consider ARTDEX:
This is an art collection management platform that enables artists, gallerists, and archivists to put art online.
It also functions as a social network where you can connect with other professionals in the industry. Additionally, ARTDEX uses cloud storage and offers its own mobile app for creating, editing, and managing your gallery on your phone.
However, one major downside to ARTDEX is that it doesn’t currently have any ecommerce features. Meaning, you can’t use it to sell your art. The ARTDEX website says it has plans to add this option in the future.
Artland
Artland is another good option for creating a virtual gallery:
This platform enables artists and galleries to showcase artwork online. Galleries are also able to buy and sell art on the platform.
Since this is a widely-used virtual gallery platform, using it could help you grow your reach. Similar to ARTDEX, it also functions as somewhat of a social networking site. You can “follow” artists, galleries, exhibits, etc.
When you sign up for a “partner” profile as an official gallery, you’ll also be able to sign up to get 3D recordings of your art.
Art Galleria
Art Galleria is another popular option to create virtual galleries:
The platform offers user profiles for artists, galleries, and collectors.
In addition to a mobile app and a “private rooms” feature, Art Galleria offers a robust set of sales and marketing tools to help achieve even better results. This makes it one of the best all-in-one solutions if you want to sell your art.
Google tools
Finally, if you’re looking for a very low-budget way to create a virtual gallery for a small audience, you might want to look into Google tools. For instance, you could use Google Slides or Looker Studio:
These tools can enable you to create a simple (or more advanced) slideshow that users can click through to view.
Of course, this option doesn’t allow for any social networking or ecommerce features. However, it may be a good choice if you just want to manually share your artwork with a select group of people. Both of these tools are also very beginner-friendly.
Conclusion 🧐
If you want to sell your artwork or simply share it with the world in a more accessible way, a virtual art gallery website is a great way to do it. Still, figuring out how to build this type of site may be daunting if you’re new to web design.
Fortunately, the steps you need to follow to create a virtual gallery are simple. First, you’ll need to choose which art pieces you’d like to display and take high-quality photos of them. Then, you’ll have to select a platform (like WordPress) to host your gallery. Finally, you’ll want to advertise your gallery so that people know where to find it. 👨🏻🎨
Do you have any questions about how to create a virtual gallery? Let us know in the comments section below!