I know my dream job is to work in an art gallery and I am planning on sending my resume to all the galleries I can find in my area but I’m not sure what my cover letter should say since they are not exactly advertising an opening. What should my cover letter say if I am pretty much just sending off my resume to see if I am a fit for any jobs they may have open?
Sending out what amounts to a "cold call" letter is pretty much going to be either hit or miss. Despite what the previous answerers have said, the reality is that most jobs these days are not advertised, so if you are sending out a cold call cover letter, it might get read, but it might get filed and never seen again. It’s impossible to predict from here. A lot depends upon the need of the gallery at the time you send out your resume and cover letter.
What it does allow you to do, though, is make a professional connection with the gallery, and that by itself could be very useful for you, perhaps not now if they are not presently looking to hire people, but down the road when they are. You can then respond to them by saying, in a much more formal way, "Hey, remember that professional letter you got a few months ago from somebody expressing interest in working for your gallery? Well, that was me, and I’m still interested."
However, I think you are approaching this wrong. If you are "sending out a cover letter and resume just to see if you are a fit for any jobs they may have open", they are less likely to be interested in you than if you "send out a cover letter and resume expressing interest in a particular job or two". Your goal is to convince them that you can actually fill a position and job function for them. If you are just asking for random consideration, that is all they are going to offer you, and typically, that does not lead to a job offer. You want to make yourself a special qualified candidate to fill a specific position, not just a random person looking for a random job at an art gallery.
So what do you say in your cover letter? Briefly, you want to express your prior experience. You’ll want to express your qualifications. You probably want to express your interest in art in general, and the artwork of the particular gallery you are applying to in particular. Feel free to show off tidbits of your knowledge. You’ll want to express why you are a better candidate than anybody else they might receive a cover letter from. The more you can get to the specifics of what they are looking for, the more likely you are to impress somebody that you are worth hiring. But as I said already, this means you need to make your job focus, or at least your cover letters, a bit less general and a bit more specific. Make sure you have a specific name to whom you are going to address your correspondence. If the jobs are not being advertised, that is a way to make sure your correspondence is more likely to be read by somebody.
Keep in mind that the art of writing a cover letter is to say as much as you possibly can in as few words as possible. A cover letter shouldn’t typically be longer than one page at most.
If you need some specific help in composing your cover letter, I am in the business of writing letters for people. Feel free to get in touch with me by sending me a message through Yahoo Answers and I’ll be sure to provide you my contact information.