Approaching Museums and Galleries: Commercial Gallery 2

Continued from Approaching Museums and Galleries: Introduction

and Approaching Museums and Galleries: Commercial Gallery 1

So, you finally got your chance to present your work, and the gallery offers you a show….

The gallery wants to sell work. They usually represent several artists at any given time, so it is in your best interest to help convince them to really sell more of your work. Everything you can do proactively will help this reach the best outcome. To aid in this, be sure to provide the gallery with reliable ways to reach you by phone, email, etc. Some galleries take their own images for promotional purposes, but if you have them, provide the gallery professional high quality and correctly sized and cropped photographs/jpegs. It always is a positive thing to link your gallery to your website and cross promote the exhibition.

It doesn’t hurt to ask the gallery what they might need from you to build their marketing materials advertising. It is inexpensive now to have a photo book made of your most recent series. You should have your biography, resume and artist statements ready to deliver. When dropping off your paintings, schedule the delivery as a meeting with the owner/manager/director if at all possible. The more you can relay your information about the work, the more the gallery will be able to express those things to its clients.

When the long awaited day arrives, and you have your show, attend your own opening/reception, on time, dressed appropriately for the event. Invite people to the opening from your own mailing list, the gallery will be glad to work with you to strengthen the relationship with prior customers. In that vein, you can ask the gallery for feedback from their clients about your work. The gallery will work with you to establish a price list, but in advance - keep your prices consistent in all your locations of sales (studio, fairs, other galleries, online etc). This is a point of professionalism. And if a client sees a work at the gallery show but a short period after the show approaches you directly – remember that you are trying to establish a relationship with the gallery, and that it is not conducive to a good long-term relationship if you undercut your own gallery. Similarly, it is not productive to be present in too many galleries in the same area, with the exact same body of work. If the work is very different, a couple of galleries can actually make sense.

Not everyone might find the right fit in for-profit commercial galleries. One excellent alternative might be an artist-run, or cooperative gallery. More about that - in another post.

Approaching Museums and Galleries: Commercial Gallery 1

Continued from Approaching Museums and Galleries: Introduction

For-Profit Commercial Galleries

It is likely that you will want to establish yourself in your home-town or region before trying to approach New York, L.A., Paris….unless of course one of those is your hometown.....

So, you can best learn about your regional galleries by visiting them – start by attending receptions for example. Get to know the people involved in the galleries you like. You should be visiting many galleries, because you must find the galleries that will be a good fit for your work. Only approaching a high-end well-known gallery that specializes in abstract oil paintings will not help you if you make realistic watercolors, or highly conceptual videos, etc. Once you have a feel for which galleries are promoting work in sync with yours, the next step arrives.

There are many ways to approach galleries: one good way to start is to check the website for information on how/if the gallery likes to receive unsolicited submissions. If there is no information – try calling to ask, and if all else fails visit again and ask. If they have a policy of accepting submissions one good way to start was suggested by Gina Fraone in ArtScope Magazine March/April 2010: bring a high quality print of a representative work (with your contact information on the back) and deliver it face up – no envelope - to the desk of the director if possible. You can follow this up with a mailed or hand-delivered promotional packet (Sample packet might include: carefully crafted cover letter, a CD of properly sized images with a document of specific information about the work, and less than a dozen really good prints of the work).

Very rarely will a gallery director be wildly happy to have an artist drop in unannounced, without an appointment, armed with a portfolio filled with actual work. An artist approaching a gallery often only sees the fact that they have great work that would be great in that gallery – but they forget that most galleries have a full schedule one to two years out, of artist shows planned with the long-term artists that they already represent. That leaves only a few openings (if any) in any year for an unplanned show. However, your work does no one any good if it hidden away in your studio, so you must get the work out there, become your own best advocate – and keep trying. If you do get an opportunity to formally present the work at the gallery, or at a studio visit – please remember that your demeanor and professionalism are important. Your are asking to enter into a professional relationship with the gallery, so many of the things valuable on a job interview make some sense here too.

Be patient with rejection, galleries are inundated with artists sending work for review. If you create a new body of work, don’t hesitate to try again in a gallery you feel might be a good fit, but declined to show the earlier body of work.

While you are working on finding a gallery to show your work, consider also getting the work out in alternative venues or competitions. (Later posts will address these options) Get feedback on your work from people whose opinion you respect, especially those active in the art world. Build a website of your work, it is hard to work in the art wold without one - and it doesn't have to be expensive or fancy. One extremely easy way to create a site is through Other Peoples Pixels, a highly user-friendly artist-run artist-created service. If you have some jpegs of your work, a resume, and just a couple of hours a time, you can create a personalized and professional site very quickly. Don't forget to also get onto social networks like Facebook and establish a presence on the web in that additional way. Consider starting a blog that will allow to post your work and philosophy.

Have your very best work prepared to hang in a professional manner – It is important to have the work look great when you do get to present it to the gallery – and it shows you take your own work seriously. So don’t use a cheap frame (unless that is a conceptual component of the work), and if you want to hang the work unframed, be purposeful about that conceptually too. Be patient, be consistent, don't give up, but don't repeat mistakes that are not helping you reach your goal - gallery representation.

Approaching Museums and Galleries: Introduction

I will be part of a panel for the Artists Professional Toolbox Program on March 25, 2010. The panel, with Griffin Museum Executive Director Paula Tognarelli, gallery owner Anthony Greaney, artist Patricia Burson, and myself, is titled “Approaching Museums and Galleries”. With that in mind, I wanted to create an outline of this information here. If you are not familiar with the Artist Professional Toolbox, it is an intensive eight-month long program designed for the self-employed artist. You can find out more information about applying for the 2010-2011 program at the Arts and Business Council of Greater Boston and the VLA Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts of Massachusetts.

There is a lot of information about approaching galleries out there, including a great column at Big Red Shiny. There are many, many books on how to promote your work as an artist. One book on this topic I have recently read is Starving to Successful: The Fine Artist's Guide to Getting into Galleries and Selling More Art by J. Jason Horejs (I became interested in this book after learning about Jason's Art Tracker software). It has some good ideas that will likely work for many, although it is important to remember to only use tips that fit well with your circumstance and personality.

It is also very important to remember that there is more than one ideal outcome in the goal of getting your work out in public – grants, public art projects, traditional for-profit commercial galleries, non-profit galleries, artist-run or cooperative galleries, university galleries, museums, web galleries, and other non-traditional exhibition spaces. For the first post, I will focus on for-profit commercial galleries, and continue the dialog in a series of future posts.