For Artists: Are Art Galleries Worth It?

For Artists, getting your work represented by an art gallery used to be the holy grail of being a professional artist. The idea is the artist heroically works in the ivory tower of the studio, communing with their muse.

The agony.

The ecstasy.

The artist will create incredible, ground breaking work. The gallery will send white gloved minions to the artist’s studio in a carriage pulled by unicorns. The art will be sprinkled with invisible fairy dust. The gallery will display the work, and like magic, thousands of adoring fans will appear. The red dots will fly. The show will sell out on opening night. There would be fist fights for those that were not so fortunate to acquire a piece. The artist will modestly accept their giant check and immediately go to the south of France for 3 months to recover from the strain of their genius.

I think we can all agree that this ain’t a thing, if it ever was. Even before a pandemic shut down all brick and mortar businesses, galleries were not the best bet for most artists.

Before I get the stink eye from everyone, I think physical art galleries should exist. There is absolutely no substitute for seeing art in person. A good gallery can very frequently earn 50% commission that they charge, and can often be a major pillar of an artist’s income streams. Notice I said, “Income streams.” Plural.

Because I'm an art history NERD, I want to go back a few hundred years.  In Europe in the 1800s, a middle class had slowly been developed and more people wanted to buy art. With the increased commerce in the arts came the necessary arrival of dealers—people who would connect the artist to the patron, and take a percentage of the proceeds.  These dealers were taste makers of their time, the instagram before color photography. Many would tirelessly support and promote artists they deemed promising, allowing the artist to carry on the important work of making the art.

This evolved into the gallery system that we know.  Today’s gallery will have a physical space, a team devoted to sales and curation, a marketing arm, relationships with art collectors and what’s called a “stable” of artists they represent.  The standard mark up is 50%, which is honestly not that bad for what they offer.

But here’s the problem:  galleries have all the same challenges that individuals have selling their art.  Supply and demand is always the driving force behind any commodity, and there is far more supply (of art) than demand.  Meanwhile, art is a very uncertain and unknown commodity, and it is a risky venture both for the artist and  dealer.  It’s also a luxury item, which means it’s the first thing to falter in any kind of stressful economy. 

Meanwhile, there are more artists than there are dealers.  For an artist these days, getting attached to a commercially viable, well respected art gallery that actually sells your art feels about as rare as getting nominated for an Oscar in Hollywood.

My experience in the fine art world is that offering an art object for sale with a published price on your website is considered the ultimate in low class and will disqualify someone from having a “serious” artistic career.

There seems to be a firmly held belief that artists shouldn’t have to deal with money, that money dirties the pure artistic process, and the money transactions should be handled by the dealer while the artist works blissfully in their ivory tower.  Nice work if you can get it. 

So what’s an artist to do?  When I finished grad school more than 10 years ago, the options were to support yourself with an unrelated job or become a college professor (not an easy get) and get grants and loans to get by.  The idea is to make your art good and notable enough that you, like the wallflower at the party, will be noticed by the prom king and asked to dance.  This actually works for some people. I know successful artists who have figured out this maze.

However, there aremore people that this DOESN’T work for. 

For a lot of early and mid-career artists, the most financially wise decision is to take the bull by the horns, use the incredible broadcasting methods available to us, and bypass the middleman.  You may elect to use brokers and galleries as a component of your art business, but it shouldn’t be the only objective.

If you are wondering about some of the successful ways you can sell your art without a gallery, I just to have a free training on the 5 Pillars of Selling Your Art that will help you get started!