Art galleries have very diverse activities, and each gallery has a different approach to its business. In general, however, almost all art galleries do certain things that can be considered the core of their business.
An art gallery creates a curatorial program of exhibitions of their featured artists or artists with whom they collaborate (long term), supporting and overseeing their careers, selling their work, and promoting them to develop their careers.
In a nutshell, that sums up what art galleries do, including everything that goes along with it. To be a little more in-depth, let’s delve into some specific elements:
- Curate the exhibition program.
An art gallery puts together an exhibition program that will be the core of the gallery’s identity. In doing so, the art gallery must provide gallery space. More often than not, galleries rent commercial properties with large windows in large cities – often in close proximity to other galleries – to provide greater visibility to many potential customers.
In addition, the gallery carefully curates its program, seeking out the most interesting emerging or established artists and inviting them to collaborate with the gallery in the form of an exhibition. The gallery takes care of transportation, insurance, supervision, installation, printing, press interest, invitations, opening and promotion of the exhibition.
When an exhibition consists of just one artist, we call it a solo exhibition, which can be an important event in the artist’s career. When an exhibition consists of two artists, it becomes a duo exhibition. An exhibition of three or more artists is called a group show .
Most galleries have a new exhibition every six to eight weeks, depending on the pace of the gallery.
- Creating artist portfolios and artist estates
Clearly, a gallery would be nothing without artists. As a result, the gallery needs to create an artist portfolio and/or artist estates. This portfolio is a carefully selected set of artists that the gallery commits to representing and is the result of a long-term collaboration between the artist and the gallery. We call these long-term collaborations represented artists , whereas artists from a one-time collaboration for one particular exhibition are called exhibited artists .
Portfolios are crucial for any art gallery. The better the artists in your portfolio, the higher the reputation of the gallery. As a result, both the artist and the gallery benefit from seeing the career growth of certain artists. When an artist’s reputation grows, so does the gallery’s reputation.
- Sell and distribute artwork
In addition to curating exhibitions and building an impressive portfolio of artists, one of the most important things galleries do is sell and distribute the work of the artists the gallery represents. The gallery acts as an artist’s dealer, doing whatever is necessary to get the artist’s work into a particular collection, public or private.
Therefore, the gallery needs to take care of shipping, billing, tracking artwork sold, tracking the value of artwork (on the secondary market), and more. The gallery becomes the direct point of contact for any inquiries for a particular artist.
- Representing and supporting artists
In addition to the actual visible work when it comes to organizing exhibitions and selling artwork, the gallery has many different roles behind the scenes of an art gallery to represent and support its artists. In addition to providing valuable advice to their artists, they do everything in their power to grow and support the artist’s career, allowing the artist to focus fully on creating artwork.
Some examples of these supportive activities include participating in art fairs to promote their gallery and artists internationally. Moreover, galleries take care of or follow the publication of books when it is time for an artist to publish a monograph. Then there are artist archives to work on. Or art history research for upcoming exhibitions. The gallery also looks for other interesting exhibition opportunities for its artists outside its own gallery, such as in other galleries or institutional shows. We should also mention relationships with the press, seeking collaborations with newspapers, art magazines or online platforms to showcase our artists in print and online, reaching a wider audience of art enthusiasts beyond the gallery walls.