Marketing Mondays: Scam or Opportunity?

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You know how I feel about Vanity Galleries. Indeed, my outspokenness has earned me the Angry Hillbilly Award from Ico Gallery, a vanity in New York City.  (As you may recall, we had so much fun with the "award"--move over, Granny and Jethro--that they eventually took the post down, presumably from extreme mortification. But not before I dumped the contents here. )

Are those red flags?
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Now comes the Bienniale Internazionale Dell'Arte Contemporanea in Florence, Italy.

They want me--they've already emailed me twice--but they want me to pay my own way, or get an organization to sponsor me. They found me via the Internet. Here's a red flag: The message was diverted to my junk email file. Here's another: You're automatically invited to participate if you have an Internet presence. Um, so my website with the paintings of big-eyed kittens in tutus and toe shoes makes me eligible?

Have you received one of these invitations, too? Maybe it's a legitimate exhibition, but those flags are waving. I don't care if Marina Abramovic did receive the Lorenzo Il Magnifico award from them. Here's the email:

Dear Artist,
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We would like to invite you to exhibit your artwork in the next edition of the Florence Biennale. After reviewing your artwork present in internet, the Internal Committee has expressed favourable opinion for your participation. The Eight edition of the Biennale will be held from 3 to 11 December 2011.

Marina Abramovic and Shu Yong in 2009, Gilbert & George in 2007, Christo and Jeanne-Claude and Richard Anuskiewicz in 2007 and David Hockney in 2003 were awarded with the maximum recognition, the Lorenzo il Magnifico award for their career. The Biennale attracted an impressive number of enthusiasts, artists and visitors. Each day of the seventh edition was studded with collateral events and conferences, such as that of Gregorio Luke, Former Director of the MOLAA at Long Beach, among others that can be seen in our website www.florencebiennale.org.

The exhibition doesn’t receive any public neither private financial assistance. The exhibition is entirely funded by artists, that can search for sponsors independently in their own country. To those possible sponsors indicated by artists, Arte Studio will provide to send a formal nd request. Sponsors will be published both in the general catalogue and the website, as you can see by visiting the sponsor’s page present in our website, that helped some artists in the past biennales.

You will find all the necessary information in the participation documents, in order to send you these we kindly ask you to send us your postal address to the following e-mail biennalefi@artestudio.net.

Best Regards,
Internal Committee of the Biennale

If you know anything, this is the time and place to share.