Why do so many artists want to work with galleries, and what are the problems with that model?

Most artists dream of just creating and handing their work to someone else who handles all the business and marketing—that’s what galleries offer. However, the gallery model has major problems: galleries take 50% of sales, they never tell you who buys your work, and it only works financially for a tiny number of artists. Your odds of making a real living through galleries exclusively are slightly better than playing the lottery. It’s also utterly exploitative—if you don’t like their terms, there’s a line of artists waiting to take your spot. Galleries can get away with this because solving the problem of how an artist can both create and handle marketing is genuinely difficult. Most artists in the gallery system either don’t make significant income or need support from spouses or side jobs.

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Asked by synthesized from teaching · Answered by Patrick Shanahan · art-marketing-podcast · 2022-01-22