Honesty

I was once at a workshop on breaking into public art where an audience member asked, "Is it OK to lie on your resume?" Laughter ensued, but you can bet a lot of the young artists there laughed for the wrong reason.

The presenter gave an excellent response. It went something like this: "The art world is essentially very small place." If you lie, you will be found out."

They say there's a class idiot in every group. If the person who asked the question filled that role, he was quickly replaced by a young woman who volunteered: "It's not OK to lie but it's OK to exaggerate. Like on this one project, I was a volunteer helper but on my resume, I said I was in charge." A short embarrassed silence followed. During that time, the handful of arts administrators and the presenter, who was a public art consultant for several small cities, probably made a mental note of the woman's name. As did her boss, who was the city official who had put together the workshop.

A friend of mine is responsible for hiring for the art department at a college. She does the initial screening and interviewing prior to a committee making the final decisions. There was a job opening recently. One seeming well-qualified applicant listed on her resume a solo show at a certain time in a certain very good gallery. Impressive. But their was one problem: my friend also lists that show on her resume. But she lists it as the group show it actually was. Next application, please.