If you think getting a feature in a major art journal requires a glossy, five-figure PR agency and a black belt in corporate jargon, you’ve been sold a very expensive lie. I spent twenty-six years watching “experts” charge artists a fortune to send out generic, soul-crushing press releases that editors treat like junk mail. The […]
If you think “how gallery marketing works” involves a high-priced publicist, a glossy coffee-table catalog, or some mystical ritual of sending invitations to the right socialites, I have some rather sobering news for you. For twenty-six years, I sat in my gallery and watched people mistake vanity for visibility. Most of the “marketing” people talk […]
I remember a young painter named Julian who sat in my gallery back in ’98, staring at his price list with the expression of a man facing a firing squad. He had priced his large-scale oils so low—out of a misplaced sense of modesty—that he wasn’t even covering the cost of the linen, let alone […]
Oil on canvas, 60cm x 80cm, 2014. I remember looking at a particularly luminous landscape during a mid-winter opening, feeling the exact moment the room shifted from polite chatter to actual commerce. Most people think a private view is just a glorified cocktail hour where people sip cheap Prosecco and pretend to understand abstraction, but […]
I remember standing in my gallery during an opening in 2008, watching a serious collector squint at a piece of mixed media on linen, 40 x 40cm, 2005. He wasn’t looking at the brushwork; he was staring at a wall label that read like a thesis on post-structuralist semiotics. He looked utterly lost, and frankly, […]
I remember a particular Tuesday in my old gallery, standing in front of a stunning, large-scale oil on linen from 2014, watching a serious collector squint at a canvas that should have been breathtaking. The problem wasn’t the brushwork or the composition; it was a cheap, warm-toned halogen bulb positioned just far enough away to […]
I remember a Tuesday in late November, twenty years ago, standing in my gallery with a bruised thumb, a level that wouldn’t stay straight, and a mounting sense of dread as I stared at a blank white wall. Most people think the magic happens when the artist finishes the canvas, but the real, unglamorous truth […]
I remember standing in the back of my gallery in 1998, staring at a collection of landscape oils that were technically proficient but utterly soul-crushing, while a local developer asked me if I knew “how to curate a small exhibition” that wouldn’t make his wife bored. He didn’t want art; he wanted atmosphere. Most people […]
I remember standing in the back of a sleek, white-walled institution in London, listening to a curator drone on about “interrogating the liminality of space” while I looked at the actual work. It was a beautiful, expensive way of saying absolutely nothing. People treat the process of how curators build exhibitions like it’s some sacred, […]
Everyone tells you that museum acquisition is this grand, mystical alchemy where a curator discovers a soul and a committee grants immortality. It’s a lovely fairy tale, but it’s absolute nonsense. In my twenty-six years in the trade, I learned that understanding how museum acquisition works has far less to do with divine inspiration and […]