I want to be relevant!!

I’ve spent the last year working at a commercial art gallery (specializing in Contemporary Art) and although that experience has been extremely enlightening and has been a position where I have grown very much personally and professionally, the clearest lesson that I have to take from my experience is that working at a large commercial gallery (or even a small one) is just not for me. It’s not for lack of ability but the absence of passion.

Some aspects of the gallery circuit I love and am thrilled by – such as the relationship between galleries and the artists that they represent. A gallery (and the people behind it) have the ability to promote and uplift talent where they find it deserved, and being able to help an artist that I truly believe in and find important succeed and be recognized for their talents is extremely rewarding.

That being said, this is barely the complete foundation and goal underlying the relationship of artists and galleries, and especially not in the case of large galleries in Chelsea where the rent demands a very different set of standards. In truth, the gallery world (at least that of New York, which is highly international versus the more local scenes of Boston or Philadelphia, for example) is one where artists are often stepped on and exploited, collectors are like dollar signs to be chased and fought over and dealers, gallerists, curators and critics endlessly battling internally the issue of integrity versus getting the rent paid.

What I really don’t like the most about the commercial art world though is how incredibly inclusive it is. What I just described above are the primary players in a fairly consistent cycle where only a tiny percentile “win.” I guess there is a certain glamour to New York and having an art scene where everyone seems to know everyone and things are just fabulous. Truthfully though, my mother has never and likely won’t ever visit galleries in Chelsea. Nor will my brother or my cousins or any of the kids I grew up with in Brooklyn. Most people don’t care about this, understandably, but I do, to these people that I find so much more important and make up so much more of the community and world I know, I want to be relevant!!