Why don't artists learn business and marketing skills in art school or photography school?

Art and photography education teaches you about the masters—Van Gogh, Monet, Manet, Kandinsky on the art side; Lewis Hine, Ansel Adams, Henri Cartier-Bresson on the photography side. But there are never classes that say, ‘Here are some of the biggest art sellers in the world making 10 to 20 to 30 million dollars a year—let’s learn what those masters are doing.’ And what are they doing? They have art on a website that looks like an art gallery, they treat social media like a conversation instead of an art machine gun, and their gallery doors are never closed—they never stop marketing. That education gap is a major reason artists struggle with the business side.

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Asked by general teaching point · Answered by Patrick · Art Business Webinar · 2026-05-29