Gallery Partnerships

["George Graham" <georgergraham@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Alison,

I've been reading with great interest the conversation you
have started. I'll add a few thoughts of my own and hope it
adds something to the subject. I've had a very long term
business relationship with a collector turned gallery owner
turned artcenter/not for profit museum director. This person
has had to evolve and change his business to stay open.

The gallery started out as his private collection that
generated sales and trades with other collectors. He would
sell my work, and many other working artists, and charge a
25% commission. The customers were all from the circle of
people around him. At times he would buy my work outright.
The collection outgrew this house, so he rented a building
and started his own gallery. The arrangement we had stayed
the same except he charged a commission on 30%. My pieces
would stay in his gallery as long as I wished, but if
nothing sold, then nobody made any money. That is the
problem with consignment and commission sales.

What I/we learned is that doing business this way results in
very erratic cashflow for me and forces the artists to try
to get your work in a lot of galleries, increase your
chances of selling your work. That's not a bad thing but it
makes it hard to do business in a small city that has a
small art buying community. The gallery had real problems
doing business this way because when a potential buyer was
interested in my sculpture, the gallery had very little
leeway in negotiating a price. If the buyer wanted a lot of
work from many different artists, they often expect some
kind of discount. Changes if price then ( in extreme cases )
then had to be cleared with the artists. Sometime sales were
lost because of the complications in pricing. Artists would
also exhibit swollen and fragile egos that had to handled
very carefully.

The gallery owner ended up changing the way he did business
so the gallery could pay its bills and keep the doors open,
and not go insane .He fundamentally change the way he delt
with the artists. His whole focus is on buying and owning
the art himself. That allowed him to sell the work for as
much as he can get . This all hinges on the artist selling
his work as low as possible. If I sell him a piece for 2000$,
he can do anything he wants with it. The risk of owning
some artwork that may     never sell is taken on by the
gallery, and I get a monthly check until I'm paid off. As
long as he personally likes my work and can also sell it, we
both are happy. He doubles my price if possible. If the work
doesn't sell, he makes nothing.

 From my experience , the artists gallery relationship in
whatever form it takes must be based on mutual trust because
in essence the artists and gallery are partners.

I do have some problems with doing business this way. I lose
total control of my work. Once its sold , its gone. The need
for income can keep you selling, but its important to build
up a body of work, and compete, show in museums and
generally get exposure in new areas. I've reached a point
now where I'm not going to sell anything for about 2years
and then really try to reach outside of western NY. That
means

I'll really miss those monthly checks. I have had to find
some kind of balance between selling my art for money, and
keeping art to promote myself in new markets, so I can
develop new relationships with other galleries. It sometimes
seems that I'm just like a hamster running in a wheel.

There are many nuances to doing business with someone for a
long period of time, and its different for everyone. If you
are consistent in your policies, true and honest with all
the artists you do business with, hopefully you will have a
lot of fun and make some money.

Good luck
George Graham