Adventures with the New York Gallery Scene
Thousands of artists come to New York from all over the world seeking to exhibit their art work. Many of these artists encounter frustration and despair. Some artists are taken advantage of by individuals who manipulate them for personal profit. No one wants to become a victim, so it is important to have an idea of what the gallery scene in New York is really all about.
The Mentality of the Art Dealer:
The art gallery business is first of all a business, art is to the art dealer as groceries are to the grocer. Art is the product sold and the dealers goal is to make a profit. The dealers job is to manipulate the media, curators and collectors to achieve that goal. The greater the skill at this manipulation, the greater the ability to make a profit. An artists life is the antithesis of this. The artists life is about self expression, beauty, psychological exploration, the enhancement of the human experience. To live as an artist requires self sacrifice, thus the being of the artist is in conflict with the dealers materialist, profit seeking mentality. This is important to bear in mind.
Part of the psychological manipulation of the dealer is to create an aura of importance around his/her person and the artwork in possession. The more important the artwork seems, the greater it’s monetary value, the easier it is to sell and the greater the dealers profit. The dealer achieves this by creating a monumental, vault like atmosphere in the gallery. The gallery is a vacant white cube, people entering it are compelled to speak in hushed tones. The artwork cannot be touched, it is presented as a sacred object. Likewise the dealer is inaccessible, hidden behind a barricade of receptionists and walls. To speak with the dealer you must request an audience and only the most important will be entertained. This combination of atmosphere and inaccessibility greatly intimidates many artists. They meekly ask for their works to be viewed and are crushed when the receptionist looks up at them coldly and delivers the standard reply, “We don’t look at slides”. This whole arrangement is designed with the intent of intimidation. Like a scene created for the set of a play or film, it creates an illusion, in this case a very intimidating one.
The art dealer is a merchant, an entrepreneur. No education or special training is required to open an art gallery. The dealer may in fact have no art education and know little about art. Approach the dealer as you would approach any merchant with a product for sale. A refusal by one or many dealers should not be interpreted as a statement on the quality of your work or your abilities as an artist. The quality of your work and acceptance by the dealer are not necessarily related. The opinion of the dealer should be irrelevant to your art.
TYPES OF GALLERIES
In the quest for exhibition and representation the artist will encounter many different types of galleries. Some of these galleries may greatly benefit the artist, some may provide little benefit and others may even be destructive.
The Commercial Gallery
The first type of gallery and by far the most desirable is the strictly commercial gallery. By commercial I mean a gallery that engages in sales as it’s primary means of income. In this type of gallery the artist is taken on and represented by a dealer. The dealer takes a commission on the sale of the artists work. The commission rate is arbitrarily set by the gallery. In general a commission is at least 50%. In the top New York galleries the commissions for a new artist can be as much as 90%. A 90% commission rate is nefarious, but most unknown artists will agree to any rate when offered the possibility of exhibition in such a gallery. The difficulty with getting an exhibition in a quality commercial gallery in New York is that it is basically a closed system. The majority of the galleries are inaccessible to the artist. Most of the commission galleries will not accept works by new artists, or if they do this artist is usually selected from within a closed circle of associates and friends. Here is an interesting story:
A good friend of mine is a sculptor. Upon finishing a series of sculptures he decided to make a big marketing push. He made up some promotional packets with slides, resume and some prints. He then found several galleries that would look at the materials and proceeded to drop them off. What he received was a pile of rejection letters and a few empty promises. However, one dealer of a very well know gallery had an interest in the artwork. The dealer expressed an interest in a studio visit to see the work for possible inclusion in a group show. The dealer made an appointment to visit my friends studio on Cooper Street. Near the dealers gallery in a trendy downtown neighborhood, is a street called Cooper Square. The dealer mistakenly thought my friend lived on Cooper Square. When the dealer figured out that my friend did not live on Cooper Square, but on Cooper Street which is a few miles uptown in a not so trendy, lower class, working neighborhood, he canceled the studio visit and lost interest in the work.
Now, if this dealer would not even consider an artist who lives a few miles from his place of business, what chance does an artist from Europe, Canada or some distant part of the US have to show in his gallery. The answer is of course – very little chance. In fact there is not much of a chance that any “unconnected” artist will be accepted at the majority of New York’s commercial art galleries. The reasons are simple. There are hundreds of thousands of artists all over the world who want to show in New York, yet there are only a few hundred galleries. The better galleries number less than a hundred. If each gallery can handle on the average twelve artists, that gives shows to about 1,200 artists. If each of these artists knows on the average three other artists, that’s 3,600 artists. Add to this artists who are friends of gallery collectors, curators, critics, plus relatives and friends of the dealers and you have at least 6,000 artists who are waiting in line for exhibitions before a dealer selects some unknown person at random from slide submissions.
The fine art business in New York City has a club-like mentality. A very small group of individuals, dealers, critics, curators and collectors control the business. Unless you are connected with these individuals socially and accepted into their social “Club” you will not be able to exhibit in any of the top galleries. You will not even be allowed to approach the dealer with your work. The dealer selects new artists from within the “Club.” The reason the system is so tightly controlled is simple. The individuals and the artists allowed into this Club all have access to a great deal of money. They have used their social contacts to generate wealth for themselves and their friends. They are protective of this wealth and do not want to share it with anyone outside of their “scene”. This is the reason it is so difficult to get an exhibit in a gallery of this type. It has nothing to do with the quality of your work. If you do not believe this, just go to a few exhibits at the top New York galleries and look at the art hanging on their walls. You do not have to be a genius to figure it out. The majority of the art work is mediocre and yet it sells for hundreds of thousands, critics extol its virtues in every newspaper and magazine, and it is in every contemporary museum show all over the world.
Due to the exclusive nature and club mentality of the commercial galleries, many other alternative type galleries have arisen. Alternative type galleries include non-for profit galleries, cooperative galleries, artist owned galleries and privately owned rental galleries.
The Non-Profit Gallery
As a rule the non for profit gallery is accepted in the art community as a decent place to show. It takes considerable effort and bureaucratic skill to open and maintain a non-profit corporation. Providing the organization is adequately funded and is not requesting money from the artists who show, the non-profit can be a decent alternative to the mainstream. The problem with many non-profits in New York is that the larger, better funded organizations are operated by individuals who emulate the commercial galleries. Therefore their policy is to be just as exclusive and to exhibit the same type of art that you see in commercial galleries.
The Artist Owned Gallery
The artist owned gallery runs the gamut from good to bad. An artist owned gallery is a gallery owned and operated by one or a few artists. It can be anything from a tiny hole in the wall storefront on a street where no one will ever see your work, to a room in the basement of a church, to a huge gallery that may even rival the commercial gallery at first impression. In general artists are not running a gallery to rip off other artists. An artist owned gallery can be a fair place to exhibit, the determination has to be made on the individual operation, it’s location, the quality of the space and the professionalism of the organization. Here is an example:
Some artists had a gallery in New York on 7th Street in the East Village. They were on the street level, which can be better than an upper floor for an alternative gallery. This storefront was a few blocks from my gallery on 10th Street. They were in the Gallery Guide. They had shows which changed every few weeks. Sometimes they took contributions from artists for the exhibits, but in general they tried not to. Someone from another city might look in the Gallery Guide, call them on the phone and decide that this is a good place. The problem was that when you got to the gallery, it wasn’t much of a gallery at all. Over the years, in order to pay the rent, they had started selling used books, first a few, then more and more. The gallery had gradually transformed into a 1960’s style, hippie book store. The books were piled all over the place in old milk crates and cardboard boxes, A huge desk covered with papers, old books, empty coffee cups, and all sorts of junk and debris dominated the center of the tiny room. The paintings could barely be seen behind all the old books and junk, and no collector of art would ever consider buying a painting from such a place. These were sincere good people who had the best interest of the artist at heart, but their situation had gotten out of control and could no longer provide much benefit to the artist. A few blocks away another artist owned a gallery which was clean and well lit. The work was presented with care and promoted fairly well. Without visiting either of these two galleries personally, you would never have know the difference.
The Co-Op Gallery
The cooperative gallery system in New York is basically a dinosaur. Most of the established Co-Op’s are very old and exhibit uninteresting artwork. You have to pay a fee to join, and then you have to pay dues each month. You also have to contribute free work and for all this you may get a show once every two years if you are lucky. The sales you will make at this bi-yearly show will be whatever business you can muster up on your own, otherwise nothing will happen. So the question is, why bother. You could find an empty room somewhere else to hang your stuff, print up some cards, call it a gallery and have a show for much less than you would pay to be part of a co-op gallery. What the co-op does have going for it, is that it may provide some social activity if you want to hang out other artists. If you are from out of town, this can be a good thing.
The For Profit Rental (or scam) Gallery
By far the lowest level gallery in New York is the for-profit rental gallery. Most of these galleries could fall into the category of scams and are run by individuals who are using the desperation of naive artists to make themselves rich. These galleries promise promotion, sales, exhibits, fame and glory for a price, generally a very stiff one. They take thousands of dollars for an exhibition and promotion. They make their money by selling the artist a show and aside from this sale, very few are made. These galleries like to hand out awards for “Talent”, purchased by the gallery from a mail order catalogue. The artist will then have a show with invitations to an opening with wine and cheese. The gallery fills the room with people for the opening. The problem is that most of them are there to try to sell the artist more stuff – art on t-shirts for this much, art in a book for that much. If someone asks for a large sum of money to be in a show, be advised, run the other way.
Of course these are all generalizations and do not apply to all galleries. I am not presenting these facts to be cynical or discouraging, this is simply the way it is. The marketing of artwork to commercial galleries can be a difficult, uncreative and discouraging process. The artist needs to maintain a distance and detachment from this process to preserve the mental composure necessary for creativity to continue. Never let the process of seeking exhibition and exposure interfere with your creative activity. I know some very good artists who have done this and who have lost their vision, giving up their art work altogether. The materialist standards of our society compel us to equate commercial success with artistic success, yet if this standard of commercial success had been applied historically, the majority of the artwork we admire today in the great museums of the world would never have been made.
Adventures with the New York Gallery Scene
by T. Slowinski of Limner Gallery, NY
