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How Art Galleries & Dealers Help Advance Your Career

Q: I'm a known artist with a fair amount of exhibition experience including a one-person show (with a small published catalogue) at a respected regional museum about 15 years ago. Not too long after that show, I had a bad experience with a gallery, decided to go it alone, swore off selling through either galleries or representatives, and only sell direct. Over the years, I've continued to produce and have now accumulated hundreds of pieces of art. My prices are reasonable and competitive with the galleries, and I sell enough to make a modest living. On the down side, I don't sell regularly outside of a small circle of friends and supporters who've known me for years. I want to explore new ideas for increasing sales. What do you recommend?

A: Reintroduce yourself to the galleries. They showed you once; they'll show you again. Get back into the scene. Don't allow one bad experience to cripple your entire career or to permanently prejudice you against anyone who buys and sells art or who represents artists for a living. You've already wasted more than enough time being resentful about one bad circumstance. FYI, you're certainly not only artist who's had something like this happen and has dropped out of the marketplace because of it.

Unfortunately, if things continue as they are, you'll become the classic case of the artist whose art only gets the exposure and recognition it deserves after transitioning to that great artist studio in the sky. You're accomplished enough and have enough art and enough of a track record to assure that one way or another, your work will eventually reappear in public. The good news is that based on your track record, and assuming you make an earnest effort, a gallery should be more than willing to take you on. So you might as well make that happen sooner than later-- preferably while you're still around to benefit from the experience.

You're being your own worst enemy by refusing to let anyone represent you or show your work. In spite of what you might think of galleries-- and you're by no means alone-- great majority of them treat artists fairly, honestly and with respect. Galleries and dealers are also an essential part of the art business. They're the ones who know how to spread the word. They're the ones who invest the time, effort, contacts, promotional skills, overhead, selectivity, "brand name" benefits, and exhibition space necessary to help artists expand their clienteles, attain critical recognition, and increase their selling prices. Sure you can self-promote, but that's nothing compared to having a good gallery with an established track record do that for you.

As for your early successes, they're significant, but not nearly enough to keep you going. Your art has to be out there before the art buying public on a pretty consistent basis or else people forget who you are (except for that loyal inner circle that continues to support you). Collectors want to know what you've done lately as well as what you did twenty years ago. They want proof that you're regularly producing, showing, evolving, and continuing to attract the attention of the art community. Even though you've been regularly producing all this time, you've basically fallen off the charts and have some significant rebuilding to do in this area. The good news is that an experienced established dealer will know how to do it.

If you're reluctant to give yourself over to a gallery for a long period of time, start slowly; test the waters. Be honest with those you approach, tell them your story, be reasonable, be flexible, be willing to give them a second chance, don't be demanding, and perhaps find one that's willing to try you for six months or a year. You have hundreds of works of art for sale and are capable of producing hundreds more. Galleries love that! With the supply chain and exhibition capabilities proven and intact, finding someone to work with you shouldn't be all that difficult (assuming you're not too difficult yourself).

By the way, you say in your email that your prices are competitive with galleries, but that's not really the case. They're actually more expensive-- quite a bit more expensive. If you sell a piece of art for $4000 to a collector, for instance, you get everything. An artist sells a $4000 piece of art through a gallery, on the other hand, typically gets about half of that, depending on the arrangement. This means that your art is actually about twice as expensive as that of competing artists who work through galleries. If you continue to go it on your own, think about aligning your prices more along the lines of what artists of your caliber get paid by their dealers rather than with what galleries charge for their art at the retail level. You're not alone here-- lots of artists without representation make this mistake and price too high. By charging gallery prices, they not only limit the number of people who are willing to buy their art, but they also limit the number of galleries who are willing to show it by basically pricing themselves out of the market.

Lastly, be willing to work with whatever commission structures the galleries propose, and be prepared to take somewhat of a financial hit. Since established galleries typically take 40%-60% of retail selling prices, you'll most likely receive significantly less per piece than you get now-- unless they decide to raise your prices, which they might. Whatever the arrangement, the outcome is more than likely to work in your favor, the trade-off being that over time, a good gallery will be able to significantly increase your profile, current selling prices and frequency of sales, which means that in the longer term, you'll not only sell more art but also make more money. The possibility also exists that if your re-entry goes really well, you might just find yourself back in the museums and in some important collections as well. You did it once; you can very likely do it again. so forget about the past and say hello to the future.