Hello! My name is Humberto Valle, I am a strategic marketer with expertise in Blue Ocean competitive strategy and have previously made a living selling my paintings through galleries, side walks and online. I'm also currently helping a gallery in Texas and Mexico run promotions for their shows which happen 3x per year.
What you want to do first is gather input from the community, you can do this through facebook groups, meetups, facebook page, local newspaper printed ad for group meeting, etc. This is basic but you need to start small and gauge the involvement and interest of the community in which you want to set up. In your case, this could be the city in which you want to show first, I recommend your home town for accessibility.
- get clout with local galleries, artists and museums by reposting their content online. Is useful if you are doing so through a page that provides them an idea of who you are and what you are trying to accomplish.
- approach them, many of them will have 'growth' exposure plans of their own - you can leverage these by offering your help and offer to provide more on their behalf with the resources you have available for your own efforts, prepare to have printed promotional material for those events and occasions if you are given the go to join them.
-take as many pictures as possible, as you promote your next event you will need images and videos to entice your next audience to your next show dates.
- share stories that belong to your displayed artwork, people go for stories, so give it to them.
- Recruit someone else to help you, wether is digital and you to in person, or an assistant to be doing the admin/paper work of it (there is typically a lot of it) find someone who can pick up where you lack strength or interest.
- Talk to artists, there is sometimes drama found locally and or the art scene might be too structured for new comers to easily promote - so find that out first so you don't step on any toes.
- plan ahead, each event should always have a minimum of 3 months to execute a promotional campaign, not including the planning and setting up prior to that. Plan your business model and your support/team accordingly.
These are some basic starting points that you need to master before you launch yourself and completely be overwhelmed by the effort and attention needed. I hope it helps, again my name is Humberto Valle. I am an expert strategic marketer and founder of Unthink Digital Marketing, which has now 2 offices and we help small business clients internationally. www.unthink.me

Hi there! Well as someone who has plenty of experience in the subject and has moved international museum exhibitions, I can tell you the first thing you have to do is to have the curatorial script. For such a thing, you need to know who is going to be the curator of such, because whoever does that job will have a vision of what he/she/they wants and what pieces to include.
Then you need to ask the curator to create the artwork list. With such, you will know where the pieces are. Most curators already have a relationship with the collections (whoever owns and has the art pieces). If not, that just know where the art piece is, you will have to be the cultural manager that create the relationship with the collector (there are many steps before but is just to give you a broad idea).
I assume you will have already the venue, if not, you will need to secure the venue where the exhibition will take place, which could be a Museum or Gallery. Keep in mind that most collections (at least if the pieces have been in museums already) require certain conditions for the venue to have and they will require a facility report for the loan that fulfills their requirements (security, temperature and humidity factors, etc).
Then you will need to consider insurance for each piece and transportation (you will need specialized art transportation, don't worry there are a few out there).
All require a cost, so you will need to consider a budget. Sometimes collections will lend you for free their pieces, and sometimes they will charge a fee or something in exchange (like a catalog which is usually required).
Then you can start contacting the institutions and request the pieces. If you are planning to do a more art collective exhibit, that might be easier than museum. There are a lot of things to consider to make all successful. It might be daunting, but that is why there are people like me that can help. I have moved all sorts of exhibitions ( I was Head registrar at Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes and because of it, I had to move pieces from Europe like the Boijmans Museum, Tate, National Portrait Gallery, Pompidou Pushkin Museum, and even the Vatican when I was a Museum director. I've also moved pieces from local collections and in the US like from LACMA or the Met). I hope this information helps and let's book a call!