Why galleries fail

Adaptability is a basic facet of intelligence and survival. Change is a given. Art is a moving target. Its cultural resonance and evaluation are never fully reflected in the facile metrics of the market.

Galleries are a part of a larger social system. No two artists require the same approach; I have as many hats as I have artists. If only I was in the business of selling hats.

As the mainstream media propagates breathless, uncritical market kibitzing, it may seem that at this moment the Pathology of Profit capitalism at its most predatory is an exclusive measure of success and value. Art is perceived as a commodity, a trophy, an asset class of bling. Everybody around art is an entrepreneur: we have concierge VIP services Cultivist , mutual funds for art Arthena , money loaning for art acquisitions too many to list, starting with the auction houses themselves , and the holiest market grail, the algorithm Artrank , to identify those foolproof profits.

To counter that, let me share a few of the guiding principles that are important at Postmasters :. Show your investors the graph on page 30 and ask them for three to five years of funding. Personally, I suggest you invite people with popular Instragram accounts and give away free selfie sticks.

People love selfies. Anyway, it is time to reap the rewards of the credibility you have have developed through dozens of exhibitions back at the garage. You should open your new carefully branded gallery, Artbox , in a nicer space keep expansion and parking in mind in a trendy yet lower-rent area like the Lower East Side or the East End of London, where you are free to start selling art with your newly minted for-profit business.

Germany has many publicly funded Kunsthalles, which Resch used as inspiration for his non-profit garage model. Section 5. At ArtBox you and your small staff of educated arts management graduates, like the ones Resch teaches at Leuphana University in Germany, should start doing brisk business with your one to four homegrown stars. You should show a few of your unrepresented question marks from the garage to round out the rest of your exhibition calendar. You might even consider borrowing another star from ArtCube , a competitor gallery in a different country, which might qualify as a cooperation concept as outlined in section 5.

She said the practice of not paying artists was now deeply entrenched in gallery culture "and presents a worrying trend".

But we live in an expensive society, overheads have gone up for everybody and the research shows how staggeringly worse off artists are while at the same time more people are enjoying the visual arts and visiting galleries.

There is an imbalance that needs redressing. A-n represents 18, artists, from emerging talent to people nominated for the Turner prize. More than a 1, were surveyed revealing:.

Jones said artists were at the frontline of the squeeze on already cash-strapped galleries, forced to make savings as levels of funding, nationally and locally, go down. University galleries follow suit, developing and advertising shows primarily to and for art people. The entire nature of art galleries can throw people off and alienate them. Who has the time for it, right? A lot of folks find art irrelevant and totally separate from their lives, especially contemporary art.

University galleries may also show the work of local artists and may even prefer work from outside the school over student art. This can leave both art majors and other students out in the cold, and can be particularly prevalent in spaces that take pride in functioning like a professional gallery. In practice, this is a means to attract wealthy attention from the community. Disconnection is the big word here: University galleries and students are disconnected from each other.

How can we change this relationship between galleries and students? Your email address will not be published. Search for: Search. Post navigation.