Artists Need to be Wary

"A vanity gallery is an art gallery that charges artists fees to exhibit their work
and makes most of its money from artists rather than from sales to the public.
Some vanity galleries charge a lump sum to arrange an exhibition,
while others ask artists to pay regular membership fees and then
promise to organise an exhibition with a certain period." Wikepedia

"A vanity gallery is one that charges artists fees in order to exhibit their work.

The shows are not legitimately curated and will include as many artists
as possible. Most art professionals are able to identify them
on an artist's resume." NationMaster.com 

But vanity galleries aren't all we need to be concerned about -
there are vanity art shows and "competitions" as well...

The Vanity Gallery - Joanne Mattera
http://joannemattera.blogspot.com/2009/05/marketing-mondays-vanity-gallery.html

Vanity  Gallery - This site posts a list of well-known vanity galleries/exhibitions along with the participation fee the artist must pay upfront. [Note - and you think $25 exhibit fees are exorbitant???]
http://www.statemaster.com/encyclopedia/Vanity-gallery

Vanity Galleries: Pay to Play at your own Risk - Renee Phillips
http://www.manhattanarts.com/readingroom/ezine/CareerBusiness/Renee_Pay.htm

Art Contests, Competitions, Shows and More-- Will They Get You Somewhere or Are They Dead Ends, Time Wastes or Scams? - The title says it all. This article goes into detail about an incredible variety of things on which you should not waste your time and money trying to advance your recognition as an artist.
http://www.artbusiness.com/osoqutscawas.html

Known Scammer Names Used in Art Scams

In general, scams targeting artists have been on the rise. In recent months textile artists have come to their attention. I personally have been targeted over the past couple of months (most recently over the past couple of weeks) with 2 emails from a Dennis Morgan using phisiology00@gmail.com as his email address. The message to me (the email subject line was the name of one of my artworks):

Hello,


Good day to you over there, My name is Dennis Morgan i'm from California and i hope this message finds you well.I was going through your works and my eyes caught...., i will like to have it for my new apartment this month. please let me know if the piece is available, if yes let me have the detailed price and more information about it. i will be waiting to read from you asap.

Dennis.

Now really, aside from all of the punctuation and tense errors, its clear that the "my eyes caught....." part is designed to cover whatever artwork was listed in the Subject header. And who signs their name with a period?

Nonetheless, at some point these emails will probably become more sophisticated and harder to immediately identify as being a scam. Fortunately, ArtQuest has taken on the mission of compiling and frequently updating the names of known e-mail scammers. So please check this list before responding to any e-mail offers to purchase, even if the e-mail seems to be legitimate (its also useful to google the person as well). If the name does not appear on the list but you're pretty certain its a scam, ArtQuest asks that you send the email to them as an attachment (this allows them to look at the complete header options and identify fake addresses).
http://www.artquest.com/ArtQuest/scammer-names.htm