A little more on art, galleries, and the marketplace

Thanks to all who came out to Politics & Prose last night (and to Becca and Mike), a good time was had by, if not all, than certainly most.

I’m traveling home today and will again be a little too distracted to do much here on Murketing.com, but wanted to pass one thing along as a follow-up to last Sunday’s KAWS column. In that column I mentioned Edward Winkleman’s blog* as a source of reasonable and clear discussion of the too-often mystifying art gallery world. He’s posted a good set of additional thoughts about artists going solo vs. working with a gallery. Check out the whole thing, but here’s a snippet: In addition to the marketplace motivations I mentioned, a gallery show can

perhaps most importantly, provide a context in which not only solo exhibitions can garner press but an artist’s work can be supported against bad press or misunderstandings on the part of the public. The program at most contemporary art galleries is an ongoing dialog about what’s important in today’s art world. Within that context, an artist can perhaps afford to take some risks that wouldn’t make sense without an exhibition space dedicated to their latest ideas, get feedback on them, and return the studio to hammer them out. I’m not sure that’s as possible in museums or other exhibition spaces as it is in many galleries. Yes, I know, the general meme is that galleries are often worse because they’ll only exhibit what they know they can sell. I think that describes a small percentage of the galleries most of us would consider good ones though.

[* PS: thanks to E for tipping me off to Winkleman’s blog in the first place.]