Artspan was started by an artist, Eric Sparre, in 1999 with the purpose of giving artists like himself a cost effective way to promote and market their work.

The basic concept was simple: give artists, photographers & artisans their own websites (real sites, not pages). Make those sites elegant in design and easy to navigate. Let the siteholders manage their own sites and give them an easy way to do it. And make these individual sites also part of a major art site attracting much more traffic than any individual site could attract.

There are currently more than 1600 individual sites and this number is rapidly increasing. In 2004, Eric saw a need for art business and art association sites that would have the same functionality (and more) as the indvidual sites. These have now been introduced: ArtspanAssociations and artspanGalleries are the portals for these offerings. The most important difference between these sites and the individual sites is that these new sites have more room to feature the work of individual gallery artists or art association members on their own separate pages.

Both artspanGalleries and artspanAssociations make it possible for galleries and groups to have their own websites without the typical costs associated with website design, hosting, development, search engine optimization, advertising, and marketing. Members pay a very low annual rate for a website that is completely theirs to manage, control, and customize to suit their needs. Any contacts or sales you make through your website belong solely to the site owner. Artspan asks for no commissions or additional fees.