Practical Questions about Working with a Gallery

Journal Entry: Tuesday, January 9, 2024

Timothey Yarger booth art an art fair.

A group of questions from Laila Rezai - lailarezaiart.com

How often do you change the work in the gallery in terms of having new shows? What happens if the work doesn't sell during a show? Does it stay within the gallery's inventory or is it sent back to the artist?

If you send work to a gallery (especially for an exhibit) typically the amount of time a gallery will require to hold the work is at least one year. It takes that long for the possible sales to pan out and get the maximum return for the effort of putting the show together. A show will be every 2-5 years depending on the size of the gallery and the number of artists represented. If you are a core artist to that gallery you might get a show every 2-3 years. After a year the dealer will assume they have shown the work to most of their clients. Then the dealer is usually responsible to return the work at their expense, but they never like to do that until such time as they are feeling like it is time to refresh the inventory with new things by usually trading out works with the artist. A lot of the time this will be ‘spring cleaning’.

However, a dealer likes to have as much inventory as they can store from different periods of your work if possible – at least different periods that they have represented previously. I have some dealers, most really, rarely ever return anything unless I insist upon it. It is a good sign when your dealer wants to hoard your work. That means they expect to sell it. It also means it is using up their storage and not yours. That’s why I say ‘the best storage is gallery storage’. It is well kept, insured, shown and close to the collectors. Some dealers have had some of my work for a decade or longer and everything eventually sells. For instance, in 2023 works were sold as far back as from 2001 and across all the years right up to 2023 across every ‘type’ of work I have made in those years. So, time is meaningless in that regard. Everything is new the first time a collector sees it. Also, as things sell, you will need to replenish the inventory between exhibitions. The dealer will often want something similar to what they have sold since it is proven.

To me, having an exhibition is a way for the dealer to have something to promote and a way to focus the artist on providing a cohesive body of work. Things might sell during the show but I don’t expect any sales during the exhibition but of course it does happen. I see them as mostly providing a focus on my work and then collectors often take a long time to think about it and wait for when they actually want to buy something, like after they remodel their house, after their trip to who knows where, or just when they are ‘feeling it’. Collectors act in their own time frame not the gallery’s. I am more interested in the day-to-day sales efforts when collectors come in randomly as they are ready to think about buying art. Things sell all of the time during the whole year.

How do you test out a new artist? Is it strictly sales based?

I assume you mean as a gallery dealer. For a dealer everything must be sales based in order to stay in business or at least the expectation of sales based on how clientele respond to the work. Dealers, when looking for new artists will be trying to fill some gap in their stable of artists. They might need a certain kind of abstract artist or a certain kind of figurative artist or a sculptor or a photographer or some style of work that their clients respond to or artists that their clients mention that they are interested in. They usually want artists that are not too similar to each other so that their clients don’t get confused between who is who. Every artist needs to be distinctively unique within that gallery but still feel like a part of the dealer’s brand. The artists are the dealer’s portfolio. This could even include something unlikely like the color palettes of the artists so that they ‘sing’ together as a collection. Depending on the dealer, they might have the idea of being able to supply a whole house with all of the needed art.

Any given artist is only going to be the right fit for a small number of galleries in the country at any given time. Most galleries are not looking for a new artist but still, if the right artist comes along they will make room for them. It is a lot of work for a dealer to set up a new artist in the gallery. But it happens all of the time.

There is no reason to be overly deflated about rejection because rejection is just part of the process. Think of all of the things every artist has to reject from their own work to make it their own and make it work and feel right. Almost everything! The same with the dealers. All of us want to find the right fit and the right feel in our relationships to complete the whole circle from creation to installation in a collector’s nest. As I say, ‘every art sale is a one in a million event’, but there are one in a million events happening constantly.

Who pays for shipping the work when it's sold and when it's not sold? 

When a dealer sells a work (even from the artist’s studio) the client always pays the shipping unless the dealer, as a part of the negotiation, foots the bill. If the art needs to be returned to the artist after a year or more of having it, the dealer should pay the return shipping when ready to return it (which they never like to do if avoidable) Imagine that if the dealer has 25-35 artists in the gallery how much return shipping that might be after a year. So they need to avoid doing that without a good reason.

How does the gallery handle sales? When does the artist get paid?

That depends on the dealer. Typically, the dealer might have a bookkeeper who pays out the artists usually within 30 days of having been paid by the client and having waited the extra time to be sure the client is satisfied with the work and does not return it. That is maybe 10 days once delivered. Different dealers have slightly different ways of doing this basic rule of thumb. They don’t want to send the money to the artist until the sale is certain and final. Otherwise, it can create obvious problems.

If the sale happens while a show is up, they won’t take the work down and send to the client until the show is concluded. That can add a bit of extra delay. But in general 30 days is the norm from the conclusion of the sale. Dealers often only send out checks to artists once a month. In some cases a dealer wants to send the artist’s money as soon as the client’s funds clear the bank. So you would want to be clear with the dealer which method they are using.

Then there is the occasion of a dealer selling to a corporate entity working through a designer. Sometimes the corporation, because of their policies, have a 60 or 90 day lag in their ability to pay for those services and then it goes to the designer and then from the designer to the gallery and then from the gallery to the artist. As you might guess, that can take a long time.

So, as the artist, you want to get to a point where you are in enough galleries that at least one of them is sending you a check and between the bunch you are getting paid every month. That takes a lot of work to get set up in a way that money is consistently coming in, hopefully from multiple sources. That probably takes 5+ galleries around the country.

What kind of marketing strategy do you implement for promoting a show?

That is the dealer’s job because they are primarily promoting their own gallery brand of which the artist is a part. Aside from that, the artist can then promote in conjunction with the gallery’s promotional efforts. As the artist, most of the strategy is coming up with a theme for the show and an artist statement to illuminate the artworks exhibited. In addition, the artist can work with the gallery to do a video conversation about the work and related issues or as an introduction of the artist to that gallery’s market.

Does your gallery have a preference of sizes of work for a show? All larger pieces, or a mix of offerings. If the latter, what's the dimensional range of what a gallery considers small, medium and large?

That totally depends on the gallery and its exhibition space. Also, the sizes of the works the artists are working in. You can go into any gallery and take a look at what is hanging on the walls and estimate the sizes that are preferred by any particular gallery.

The artist, when trying to figure out what sizes to work in should make their own creative decisions to work at the scale that best fits their own vision and their own studio and economic limitations. In my own case I work in any size from 4 x 4 inches on paper to 72 x 108 inches on canvas and exhibit works in all sizes in between. This allows me to have works available to most layers of the market. But that diversity is not without reason, all of my larger works are based on much smaller studies. So I have to make a lot of smaller collage works to have enough imagery to pick from for the larger works.

What art fairs does your gallery participate in if any? If so, how do you decide what pieces to show?

Various of my dealers occasionally participate in art fairs. They pick what they want to exhibit at those fairs from their inventory unless they are featuring a specific artist who might then provide new work as if for an exhibition. I don’t have or exert any control over those decisions. which spurs a further question

Who is in Control of What?

I typically feel that the dealer should be left free to operate as he/she sees fit just like the artist. I have seen sometimes that an artist might try to exert control over a lot of the elements that I consider to be the dealer’s purview. I am pretty sure that rubs the dealers the wrong way and before long that artist isn’t in that gallery much longer. Obversely, there are some dealers who can get a little too control freakish, too picky, etc. and while some artists might tolerate it, some will not and it can cause tension.

Where all of those points of stress are can be different for each dealer/artist relationship. As the artist you mostly just want to feel your autonomy is being respected and the dealer wants the same thing.