I’ve been to art school, had a few shows, but can’t seem to find gallery representation. I’m working all the time on my art and career, but the whole gallery thing eludes me. Why? Frustrated and galleryless in New York
I get asked this question more than any other, and frankly, the answer could fill a book, but what’s missing from this question is why you want a gallery and what kind of relationship will help your practice?
The most obvious reason to seek representation is the promise of exhibitions and sales. Many gallery contracts also include guarantees for art fair participation. It may seem obvious, but you have to want sales to secure a gallery, and for a gallery to take you on, you should have a sales record. Chicken, meet egg.
Dealers like artists with established sales records because it lowers their already considerable financial exposure. Renting a gallery space in Tribeca costs anywhere between $8,000-30,000 a month on top of staff, marketing, and daily operations. With that kind of overhead, very few business owners can afford to take on the financial risk of untested artists.
Understanding these needs gives you a path forward. If dealers need to believe the work will sell before taking an artist on, you need to find ways to demonstrate that to them. To achieve that, you can sell the work on your own or aim for inclusion in summer group shows, where the expectation of sales is already minimal, so a gallery is more likely to take a risk on the artist. Your job, once the show has opened, is to promote the hell out of it and bring as many potential buyers as possible.
Now, I get that this isn’t all that desirable from the point of view of the artist. Ideally, the gallery handles promotion and sales while you make art. But in practice, you’re promoting in partnership with the gallery, which lowers their financial risk and helps them sell your work.
Represented artists are spokespeople for the gallery. In that role, you need to promote your shows and the shows of other artists in the stable. So go to their openings, share their work on social media, and name-drop the gallery whenever you can.
You can see the artist’s role as representative even in low-stakes promotional tools like gallery podcasts. I recently listened to a David Zwirner podcast with artist Jordan Wolfson, and what struck me was how on-message he was about his gallery. Throughout the conversation, he mentioned Zwirner exhibitions — always the most groundbreaking shows by the most groundbreaking artists he’d seen. He didn’t mention a single artist outside the stable. I consider this a bit extreme, but the intent is clear — make the gallery you show at the center of all that is good.
One of the reasons it’s so important to know what you want to get out of the relationship with the gallery is that it allows you to make decisions that grow your practice in the direction you decide. If your main goal is sales, you want to make sure your partner can deliver more than you can on your own. You might be surprised to learn that most artists I work with who make art full-time do better financially without a gallery. Galleries take 50% of the profit, which adds up quickly.
But a good dealer is worth their weight in gold. They can build your market by carefully raising prices, providing a show venue for your work, and connecting you to museums and press opportunities you might not find on your own.
The trick is to figure out who has the type of relationships you need most for your career. Some galleries have more relationships with museums. Others excel at collector cultivation. Others still have extensive connections with designers. Understanding what you need helps you find a gallery that’s right for you.
Know Thyself
That’s important because “the finding part” is the hardest task for most artists. Assuming you know what you need, how do you find matching galleries? How do you talk to dealers when you know you’re not supposed to solicit them? And if you get so far as a conversation about showing, how do you know that the dealer will have the skills you want?
If you’ve been working for a few years, you have more resources than you think. Successful “finding” is a two-part process. The first part requires self-knowledge. Self-confidence is required for self-promotion and basic networking, and this comes from understanding what you’re actually offering.
Many artists approach galleries as if they’re asking for a favor. But a dealer has no business without your art! The gallery needs something to sell. You need their connections and support. If you don’t know what you’re bringing to the table, you can’t act like a partner. You just take whatever’s offered. No partnership ends well that way.
When I was younger and hoped to make a go of it as an artist, I didn’t promote my work because I didn’t think it belonged in a gallery. In retrospect, I know the work was fine. What I lacked was self-knowledge. I didn’t know I had the skills to promote my work, because I’d never tried. And because I didn’t understand what I was offering, I couldn’t confidently put myself out there.
Is that your problem? Hard to say, given the amount of information I have to go on, but self-doubt usually drags on an artist’s practice at some point in their career. That’s the price of career lows, and no one escapes the peaks and valleys, no matter how lucky.
Promote Thyself
The second part of the “finding” process is deeply unsexy work, but it’s not complicated. For years, I thought PR firms had some magic process I didn’t understand. They don’t — they just spend all day cultivating connections. That’s your job, too.
The work itself is straightforward: Study resumes of artists whose work is similar to yours, visit galleries that show work you like, and post about exhibitions on social media to demonstrate investment in their programs. PR companies track their contacts and outreach for clients. You should do the same. It’s tedious, but a lot of it is just remembering who you know. If you’ve been working for five to ten years, you have more connections than you realize. You just forgot them.
Most of us recognize that artists get shows through other artists, with few left unstung by its exclusionary nature. After Jules De Balincourt posted about Loie Hollowell’s paintings on Instagram, she was picked up by Pace, and her career took off.
But most of the time, it’s simpler. Dealer Charlie James asks his artists for studio visit recommendations when he’s in New York. He’s not alone. A gallerist once asked me for a list of artists to consider for an open spot in his program. I was so thrilled; I spent two days on it and enlisted two close friends to help. He loved it.
That’s how you build relationship capital: Demonstrate expertise in areas a dealer might rely on. You might not be a fit for the gallery, but you’ll definitely be a fit somewhere.
