Welcome to Help Desk, where I answer your queries about making, exhibiting, finding, marketing, buying, selling — or any other activity related to — contemporary art. Email helpdesk@dailyserving.com with questions. All submissions remain strictly confidential and become the property of Daily Serving.
I’ve been with my gallery for about four years, and had two solo shows (and participated in a few group shows) with them. They are nice people and there have been some sales, but lately I’ve been thinking that it’s time to move on. Recently I’ve had some very encouraging studio visits with other art dealers, and I think one of them might ask me to join their roster. How do I break up with my current gallery without creating hard feelings? I would definitely be moving up in the world with the new gallery.
Back in 2008, art critic Roberta Smith wrote, “An overheated art market sets all kinds of things in motion. Big galleries with money to burn and multiple spaces to fill start circling smaller galleries, eyeing their most successful artists like the underdeveloped properties they sometimes are. Artists get itchy and think about moving up the gallery food chain. And boom or bust, even the friendliest, most mutually beneficial artist-dealer relationships can prove finite. They are outgrown or become stale. Suddenly, it’s time to move on.” And lucky you, to be in a position where you can pick and choose! Most artists I know would love to be in your shoes right now — and yet we all know that everything has its price. You may not be able to advance your career without incurring some hurt feelings. The question is perhaps not if but how much.
But, unless you’re being coy, it sounds as though you may be counting your proverbial chickens before they are even out of the shell. In advance of planning your great leap forward, I want you to read this Help Desk column from 2013, in which artists talk about how to find a gallery that’s a good match. They offer lots of pertinent questions, such as, “Do you like and respect the people running the gallery? Do you trust them, feel that they understand your work, and that they are both interested in and capable of promoting it in a way that will advance your career? Do you feel that they understand the business, and have done well for the other artists that they represent? Do you know any of those artists, or have you talked with them about how they feel their career is going? Remember that you are entering into a business partnership with these people, possibly for an extended period of time. Do you have a clear sense of what your expectations and theirs are regarding this relationship?” Read through the advice and think very carefully about where you want to be, and with whom you want to be working.
John Divola, Cells, 87CA1, 1987-9.
If you do get an offer and decide to move on, here are some tips: