Talking galleries 2013

Presentation by Georgina Adam Introduction by Bartomeu MarĂ­

Talking Galleries Barcelona Symposium is an international meeting for gallery professionals that discusses the most urgent issues concerning contemporary art galleries. The forum hosts experts and opinion leaders and aims to find effective answers for gallerists to develop their practice according to the new realities shaped by the business cycles, the rapidly changing technology and the shifting values of the traditional marketplace. The present publication collects the contents and most prominent lessons after the second edition in 2013.

SPEAKERS Georgina Adam Clare McAndrew Albert Baronian Daniel McClean María de Corral Ann Demeester Ana Letícia Fialho Victor Gisler Ainhoa Grandes Massa Jeanine Hofland Noah Horowitz Alberto de Juan Sylvain Levy Billy Maker Bartomeu Marí Kamel Mennour Eva Moraga Claes Nordenhake Lisa Panting Emilio Pi Alain Servais Jocelyn Wolff

Table of Contents INTRODUCTION Georgina Adam

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PRESENTATION Bartomeu Marí

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SESSIONS Where are we now?

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40 Years in the trade 35 Are galleries still relevant?

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A resistance ecosystem 61 Developing and maintaining relationships within the art system: institutions, dealers, collectors and the community

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Taking care of our artists 91 Carving out a space among the big brand galleries 105 Tomorrow’s art market

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The chinese art market

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Art fairs vs. Non-fair models

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Code of practice

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Gadgets & tools 183

introduction

By Georgina Adam * Held in Barcelona in November last year, Talking Galleries brought together some important art market specialists, from gallerists, fair directors and artists to the “consumers” of art, collectors and museum representatives, to debate the challenges facing art galleries today. In the following pages, you will find details of all the sessions, but below is a brief summary of the subjects covered and the conclusions reached.

In his keynote opening address, MACBA director Bartomeu Marí took the work Between the frames by Antoni Muntadas as a starting point. He saw this 1980s work as a series of “chapters” or “doors” in the art system, all involved and necessary. But today, as he pointed out, some of these “chapters” have almost disappeared – such as art critics – and other ones have arrived, such as auction houses or biennals.

Understanding this changing landscape was the theme of the symposium, and Noah Horowitz, director of The Armory Show in New York, continued the session with the question “Where are we now?” He noted the radical changes which are taking place in a hugely expanded environment, with the arrival of many new art fairs, changes in auction and gallery practice and the impact of globalisation.

These aspects were debated in different ways over the two days by all the attendees, who are working in an environment that has vastly changed since, for instance, gallerist Albert Baronian started with just $250 in his pocket, 40 years ago.

Inevitably, China was the subject on everyone’s lips, both because of the size of its market and the decisions art market professionals have to make: to attempt to penetrate it, or not? Collector Sylvain Levy was present to explain many aspects of the Chinese market, noting its great potential – but pointing out that contacts and networking is crucial.

As Clare McAndrew emphasised, the impact of heightened competition and the event-driven aspect of the market means that the retail gallery is under pressure. But she pointed out how galleries still offer specialised, personal

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service and expertise, compared to the impersonal corporate auction houses.

Claes Nordenhake and others debated the merits of “gallery weekends” – which bring collectors back into the galleries, and Jocelyn Wolff and Kamel Mennour offered their personal experience of working with artists within a smaller structure. Collector Alain Servais offered many useful insights into gallery practice today, noting that change is inevitable and that galleries need to professionalise, embrace the internet and co-operate with other galleries and institutions.

The institutional standpoint was offered by Ainhoa Grandes, who in a fascinating presentation revealed how many gallerists contact her without even knowing her museum and what it displays. The issue of information was hotly debated: how much, how often, should it be sent out. Interestingly, participants complained about the quality of information, as well as the quantity: they got too much, they said, but not the right information.

The clear points to come out of the two-day symposium were a need, among all market players but particularly smaller galleries, to professionalise – and to accept that change is inevitable. The internet, new markets, art fairs, aggressive auction houses – all present new challenges and participants have to find ways of surviving and thriving in this changed climate. But at the end of the symposium a true success story was revealed: a small Swedish gallerist, who had attended the first Talking Galleries back in 2011, was so inspired by the experience that she had taken the plunge and opened a second, more ambitious space. This was doing well, she explained, and the trigger point was what she had heard and learnt in Barcelona. The whole Talking Galleries team sincerely hopes that each symposium will inspire others to achieve similar aims, and wishes them every success.

*Georgina Adam, Art Market Editor at large for The Art Newspaper since 2008 & Art Market correspondent for the Financial Times. Adam currently lectures subjects on emerging cultural centers, one of her main fields of interest, at the Sotheby’s Institute of Art and at Christie’s Institute. Adam has been writing about the art market and the arts in general for 25 years. She began her professional career in Paris, where she studied Islamic Art at the École du Louvre. After that she worked in London for The Antique Collector, The Daily Telegraph and other publications dealing with art sales.

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Presentation

By Bartomeu Marí * A great work by the Catalan artist Antoni Muntadas has been recently acquired thanks to the invaluable and constant commitment of the MACBA Foundation. Now the installation titled Between The Frames, a portrait of the art world in the 1980s, is part of the MACBA collection. As all of you know, many changes in the system of art took place in the 1980s.

This is a portrait of the system as the artist saw it at the time. It’s composed by 8 chapters, each presented in a booth with a different color. Each chapter is dedicated to one professional “actor” in the art system: in the 1980s the dealers and the galleries were different things. The epilogue in the work is the voice of the artists and I think this is very important: we all work with artists, we bring their work in contact with the public. Yet, let’s ask: What is the public? What is the audience today? What are their interests?

Now we can see how 30 years ago we were not aware that biennials and auctions would become so important. I wanted to bring this work to your attention because it tells and explains something very important: galleries and museums are part of the same system. Art galleries have traditionally had the role of “quality filters” regarding the art market and the art system. Galleries relied their work on their own “expertise” on which collectors based partially their decisions. In the last 20 years many transformations have taken place. Other actors have played the quality filter role of galleries. Agents such as art critics have profoundly changed and almost disappeared, being absorbed in part by curators. Criteria and value emerge from major international exhibitions and biennials that operate as prescribers.

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A large part of the art market does not flow through the galleries circuit but has “diluted” and is everywhere.

The gallery becomes a laboratory for an infinite and utopian market as it does not have a precise location and any place is likely to hold transactions. Art fairs are challenging museums as privileged places for novelty and confirmation value. Museums in fact have lost their leadership as heritage keepers in favor of large private collectors that drive their own museums.

The art market absorbs heavy financial investments and therefore disrupts the traditional idea of​​ collecting based on the passion, knowledge and long-term projects. Domestic collecting has kept its specific and traditional shapes, but financial and corporate collecting has much changed their types.

Auction houses use to trade with established or dead artists and now have an essential role in the primary market. Many different formats and types of artistic production have also appeared. The interaction of agents within the art system should take into account the evolution of the market.

Nowadays the institutional collectors dedicated to build a historical and educational project seek active accomplices in the private sector. When public resources management dwindle and disappear, museums must associate themselves with our traditional partners: artists, collectors, galleries, trustees and ... galleries. The transformations of the various actors in the system, each with their respective interests, makes it increasingly necessary to analyse the ethics governing the system, its values ​​and principles.

Two more ideas just to conclude these welcoming words: one is that we do believe, as one of the youngest

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museums, in one of the youngest democracies in the European Union, that art is very important and it is central in the education of people. Yet some politicians in our beloved European Union consider that art is the privilege of the rich, and whoever wants it has to pay for it. I would like to invite all of you to enjoy and to discover one of the youngest collections of contemporary art in Europe that is on display now at MACBA. I do much believe that you also share the concern for larger accessibility of art and that its value goes far beyond its commercial status.

*Bartomeu Marí, Director of the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) and since August 2013 he is the president of International Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art (CIMAM). He was the Curator of Exhibitions at the Fondation pour l’Architecture in Brussels between 1989 and 1993, and was also the curator at IVAM-Centre Julio González in Valencia from 1994 to 1996. He has been director of Witte de With, Centre for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam from 1996 to 2002. Between 2002 and 2004, Marí was the coordinator of the Centro Internacional de Cultura Contemporánea in Donostia-San Sebastián. In 2002 he cocurated with Chia-chi Jason Wang the Taipei Biennial. In 2005 he was the Curator of the Spanish Pavilion at the 51st Venice Biennial where Antonio Muntadas was the invited artist. Between 2004 and 2008 he worked as Chief Curator at MACBA.

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SESSIONS

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Noah Horowitz Art historian and expert on the international art market. Executive Director of The Armory Show and member or the Art Business Faculty of Sotheby’s Institute of Art. In 2011, Horowitz was the Director of the VIP Art Fair, the first ever online art fair.

Horowitz completed his PhD in Art History at the Courtlaud Institute of Art. He has contributed to publications for The Serpentine Gallery, the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art and the United Kingdom’s Intellectual Property Office. His writings and interviews on contemporary art and economics have appeared in The New York Times, The Observer, Artinfo, Das Handelsblatt and ArtTactic. Recently he published Art of the Deal: Contemporary Art in a Global Financial Market (Princeton University Press, 2011).

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“Where we are now?”

Understanding the shifting values of today’s art system

SPEAKER Noah Horowitz CONCEPTS art market, art fairs, galleries, dealers, private museums, market friction, art, Internet, Western market

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“Where we are now?”

Understanding the shifting values of today’s art system

Noah Horowitz We will begin by looking the growth of the market over the last 10 to 20 years and then shifting to this giant event-driven turn, which is really much talked about nowadays and has completely shifted the paradigm.

And a wrap up by trying to summarise a few key shifts that seem to be happening and to open on to what that might mean for the gallery business specifically and other broader developments as well.

Market Growth

Specifically looking at auction sales, rather this is auction private sales, basically what you can see is that the market is essentially double in size in the last decade globally, we see it hit a peak in the 2007-2008 period then decline but rebound quite significantly.

In the late 90s there was an incredible small market for contemporary art at auction, only $44 million sold by that definition in 1998, that peaks at a total of $1.35 billion in 2008, so the accent of that at least in the auction standpoint it has been tremendous. In the public realm we have seen a cascading of record-breaking prices, The Scream sold at Sotheby’s a year and a half ago at $120 million, or the famous Picasso that Steve Wynn was originally selling it to Steve Cohen for $135 million and sold it for $155 million.

Intheprivatemarketaswellwehaveseenothersales,thisisatleastwherewestand nowadays, purportedly the largest single art transaction ever, Cézanne’s Card players for a quarter of $1 billion selling to the Qatari royal family.

At auction, the Bacon triptych of Lucian Freud holds the record for the most expensive work of art sold in the post war contemporary auction.

Outside of the auctions, there has been a huge riding around what the

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star branded artists are up to, Damien Hirst for example opened his exhibition at Alriwaq Doha exhibition space last October. In a gallery landscape, certainly in New York there is a huge controversy very publicly over Gagosian Gallery and David Zwirner Gallery battling out for Jeff Koons.

In London, White Cube opened their new exhibition space in Bermondsey, just like a spaceship; Zwirner opened their space in a townhouse on the other side of town in Mayfair. Of course Zwirner is not the only of the American dealers to come to London recently, Pace Gallery opened and several others as well. Back in New York meanwhile Zwirner opened their giant space by Annabelle Selldorf, a space on 20th st. Hauser & Wirth, the Swiss-London gallery opened on 18th St. And Galerie Perrotin opened a space in the Upper East Side with a huge exhibition extravaganza.

Elsewhere in New York, the Whitney Museum is launching their new museum at end of the Highline in Chelsea, shifting from the Upper East Side where they have been for many years. The museum is said to open in 2015. Eugenio Lopez in Mexico City is opening his private museum, not a gallery, but is certain indicative of the huge number of these private initiatives that I will go through.

And less one forgot every gallery in the world is now also jockeying to have a footprint in Hong Kong and Asia. Galerie Perrotin’s had its inaugural show during Art Basel Hong Kong; White Cube, Simon Lee, Lehmann Maupin and many others have opened in Hong Kong too.

We are not just seeing a rise of values around these major blue-chip branded artist, but a whole shifting of where business is being done in the art world. The US and the UK certainly from a commercial standpoint remain the center of the trade, but the market dynamically is shifting tremendously. Looking at the growth of the market from 2006 to 2011, we can see that in 2006 is what it has been in place for a long while, the US and UK comprising in the range of two thirds to three quarters of the auction market by value.

What happens not even five years later is a significant scaling back up.

China in 2001 was probably somewhere in the range of 2 to 3%, on 5% in 2006 and up to 30% in 2011. It is significant that China eclipsed the US to become the largest singular domestic art market in the world. So

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that is quite a feat in five short years. In 2012 the markets rebalanced a little bit, the market in China cooled down, the US accelerated and that is essentially where we are now.

There is a huge amount of controversy and discussion over the legitimacy of all of this data. Fake biding practice, market for forgeries as well, all taking some of that attention. It is significant and is extremely rare that a story about the art market actually made it to the cover of the New York Times. One of the Paper’s journalists had cut off at the knees the legitimacy of all this data about the Chinese market, discussing issues such as fake bidding at auction; to drive up prices; the fact that a lot of businesses is not consummated on the back end; and that the largest auction houses are still government run not changing hands. There is this other discussion of museums in the mainland, where unit 3/4 to 90% of what is on view are purported to be forgeries.

So that is where we are, I think it is safe to assume that regardless of those types of practices, market in China and developing markets are certainly down to impact on how business is done and moving forward.

Event Driven Turn Probably the singular most key shift in the business of the last two decades it has been this dramatic event driven turn in the business. We can see the roots of that really from the growth of the auction business itself, which really had occupied essentially a wholesale trade to something that would become retail focused and shifted out of the professional hands the small few insiders and the dealers. Beginning in the early 70s in New York we have the rise of modern and contemporary auctions. That all again began to take shape in the early 70s and accelerates dramatically in the post 2000 context. The 90s after the fall of the wall, known as the biennial decade, in which every aspiring city in different developing part of the world, secured with a mixture of government, public subsidy and private subsidy to fund temporary exhibitions.

Since then what shifted dramatically is that the art fairs have come: Art Cologne was founded in 1967, Art Basel at 1970, etc. In 1970, but really since the mid-to-late 90s we have seen this huge boom in the fair business.

Today there is around 200 international art fairs. What we know is that fairs are commanding more and more the attention of the collectors, and have become one of the primary conduits for galleries to conduct their business.

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McAndrew’s study in 2012 estimates that fairs now comprise 36% of gallery sales, which is up from 31% the year before. And certainly in my shoes anecdotally there is plenty of dealers that I talk to that, so anywhere from half to two thirds or three quarters of their business is at fairs. There is all different kinds of fairs, as well there are heavyweight fairs, the Basels, the Friezes, there are regional fairs that service specific markets, the Contemporary Istambul, the Art Abu Dhabi, the Paris photo, etc.

The rationales for participating are multifold. For some dealers its sales, certainly for everybody it is establishing a network, meeting people and then, there are softer benefits as well, for promotion, simply being seen at a fair, being seen next to a gallery that you aspire to reconsider to be a peer, etc.

In terms of how the fair business itself is shifted, there are two key paradigms: one is that the fairs themselves have shifted from professionalised trade fairs to museums experiential extravaganzas; and the second is the lifestyle trend. I think Art Basel moving to Miami in 2002 is the most obvious example. At The Armory last year we launched an outdoor initiative, a giant piece by Cary Leibowitz. So it is something more and more fairs are doing.

The whole market is really been characterised recently by just blurring the boundaries, but we are seeing auctions encroaching on the dealer terrain crunch. Christie’s a few years ago did not work out so well, S2 which is Sotheby’s gallery showroom, it has been much discussed as well, and beyond that in the wake of the 2009 crisis, you have the auction houses shifting more their business to the private treaty sales realm, where they are competing more directly for secondhand work with dealers and no longer in the public showrooms of old.

Dealers themselves have undergone a huge change, the obvious tipping point of this is the gallery expansions that we referred to the White Cube’s, the Zwirners, the Hausers, the Gagosians, with these knockout show spaces. But there are many others as well and in many cases nonselling shows. The Ad Reinhardt show, which opened at David Zwirner, is a great example, and a phenomenal show as well. But beyond that, we have seen galleries opening project spaces and there are other galleries in the sort of blurred terrain between a commercial gallery and galleries that also have achieved a not-for-profit status. They straddle both worlds.

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“Where we are now?�

The interesting thing for me about where we are with this globalisation curve is that it is not just mega galleries that are dictating these trends, we have smaller and mid-level galleries that are now opening multiple operations as well. The other trend that we have seen is not just the Zwirners and the Hausers showing older artists but a younger generations not just showing emerging work but looking back at some historically relevant work.

Private Museums On the collectors side, a huge wave of private museums have opened since the mid to late 90s. Outside of the private museums itself we have collectors setting the pace through their gallery project spaces. Adam Lindemann with Venus over Manhattan is an interesting example in New York. He is not representing artists but he is doing shows at a level that many other galleries are.

On the artist side we have artists becoming entrepreneurs and most of the discussion around this is centered on the Hirsts, the Koons, the Murakamis, etc. We have new rules being made in areas like China where artists themselves are setting the tempo, they are not necessarily as loyal to galleries as they are in the West. Many of them are selling directly from their studios and creating new networks.

Within the fair landscape itself we have fairs becoming more and more like museums. Unlimited, Independent New York, Frieze Masters and Artissima are a great recent examples.

Recently I have noticed a brewing tension under the surface of all of this, both on behalf of dealers and journalist basically saying that this is really too over-the-top, that we have lost all sense of meaning and that contemporary art has essentially become nothing more than a playpen for the ultra rich.

Beyond that we have disenfranchisement with other things, with market manipulation, forgeries, some of these are peak structures (...) The article mentioned before of The New York Times is a good example of that, and there was a response to that article by Blake Gopnik, where he actually takes the argument one step further and says we have come to the state actually were we should embrace forgeries as the only real critique of the art market nowadays. He raises some interesting points within it, as

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well as outright silly ones, politically he feels that forgeries are great for the market, essentially because it would return the market to a place that museums can once again purchase things.

Market Frictions There has been a lot of discussion about the middle market flagging and basically all power shifting to the blue chip power dealers. According to McAndrew’s study of the dealer landscape, business was down on by 17%. For dealers that do between €500,000 and two million it declined one percent on two to €10 million down two percent, and for dealers that are doing business above €10 million they are actually increasing 55%. “the cost of doing business is only getting higher: real estate prices, rent is increasing, the cost and pressures of participating in all these international art fairs and events is growing”.

So this whole “occupy wall street” mentality is really shifted and it totally exploded in the contemporary art market. But we are seeing beyond that cold data are a number of different factors. First of all, the cost of doing business is only getting higher: real estate prices, rent is increasing, the cost and pressures of participating in all these international art fairs and events is growing. There is questions around whether the market itself is becoming saturated, there are certainly in cities like New York, London and Paris, feelings that gallery visits are on the decline, that people just do not have time anymore and they are only going to the blockbusters, the auctions and the fairs.

“There is too much pressure to participate and, more than the galleries itself being exhausted, the artists simply do not have the work”.

The hugely competitive pressures that the industry is experiencing are becoming ruptured and the dealers that make long-term investments are under attack by other structures that do not allow them to capitalise in this investments. Again costs arising. There is too much pressure to

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participate and, more than the galleries itself being exhausted, the artists simply do not have the work. Artists are getting asked to make work for one fair, then the next fair and then a gallery show, museum show, etc.

So the pressure is simply too great and the question is how is this going to change. One of the other critiques of the system is that with the rise of these fairs there might not be enough good art to go around.

It seems to me that galleries will inevitably have to scale back. The day of galleries doing 8 to 10 to 12 plus art fairs seems to be shifting. I think a few years ago there was a phase in which galleries simply cast a wide net. I honestly do not see that happening anymore as we move forward.

The cost again are escalating and in some way galleries should shift some of those costs and open up new pathways for other entrepreneurs in the marketplace. In terms of other trends, I think we will see galleries continue to build and expand their networks internationally and also with dealers locally through joint representation joint fair participation.

Internet as a tool In terms of other areas for renovation, I think the Internet will be an incredibly valuable tool for sales in the gallery realm, at least for the foreseeable future under about $10-$20,000. The key drivers of the Internet for the galleries will remain as a more sophisticated on tour and then we will see a shift of advertising dollars away from the Art Forums, towards more sophisticated online strategies that can potentially result in sales but just as equally, more strategically generators for business done at art fairs and galleries themselves.

“Are there just too many fairs? I do not have the answer to that. What I do sense is that certainly at the high-level we will see less and less galleries participating in those fairs or some galleries at least being more strategic on which ones they do”.

Looking at what is going to be happening in the fair landscape, one question that is always raised is: are there just too many fairs? I do not have the answer to that. What I do sense is that certainly at the high-

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level we will see less and less galleries participating in those fairs or some galleries at least being more strategic on which ones they do.

I think that many of these fairs that can not demonstrate a real return for their clients, in terms of sales and positioning, will be under a lot of pressure and some will definitely fall by the wayside. We will see more of the global franchising that we have undertaken in the last couple years with Art Basel opening in Miami and in Hong Kong; Frieze with their recent launch of Masters in New York, Paris Photo L.A. etc.

There are certain risks as well, one is the homogenising that occurs as a process at unfolds. It is not necessarily that easy to do. One thing for us at The Armory, that we have looked into within this increasingly frenetic fair landscape is, how do we stand out as a fair that really feels very distinctively in New York. So that is something that all these fairs will need to undertake. What makes them specific, what makes them tie end to the local community, etc.

For us at The Armory it is really about being the gateway to New York, to America to some extent, we work very closely with the other fairs that are on simultaneously, we develop networks and partnerships with the MoMA and other key cultural partners.

Concluding remarks The blurring of these boundaries within the marketplace is inevitable, it is driven by increasingly steep competition, scarcity of high-quality work and the need to constantly look for new markets, new ideas and innovative strategies also to stand out from the crowd. It is also part and parcel of the art world globalising. It is very easy from a Western perspective to say things and some of these developing markets feel different or possibly even shady, but that those types of practices will come to play a more vocal part of how business is done internationally. “The blurring of these boundaries within the marketplace is inevitable, it is driven by increasingly steep competition, scarcity of high-quality work and the need to constantly look for new markets, new ideas and innovative strategies also to stand out from the crowd�.

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To take one example from China: it is interesting that in the Western markets there is this huge reluctance to sell to anybody that is known to be speculative from the outside. All this discussion around art investment funds and collector speculators is a good example. In China at some level some of these art investment funds that have been started really is the only viable source to sell work. The whole mentality of the gallery system there is much less politically motivated than it is in the west visà-vis those types of avenues.

The sales through the Internet and other types of channels will increase.

Art will pop up in spaces that we would not otherwise have expected it to.

We will continue to see a lot of different types of speculative dalliances with contemporary art. For example, Restoration Hardware is one of the multibillion dollar furniture company that has undertaken this contemporary art initiative in New York City. It is not a foundation, not a collection and it is very specific sales oriented. From their perspective they have incredibly ambitious goals of really changing and impacting what the gallery business is.

Despite all of this and specifically as a result of the developments like what Restoration Hardware is undertaking, it is clear that the core fundamentals for the gallery business, it stands for and represents, very much still matters.

A lot of gallery initiatives like Sotheby’s are not representing artists, it is basically about a short-term speculative sales operation. We are seeing a lot of that in developing markets and elsewhere, where you have this sort of profusion of project spaces and gallery spaces this a curator that is basically trying to put a program together and really just seeing what works. But the more of those initiatives unfold it becomes more valuable for gallerists that represent a stable of artists in a certain set of professional practices and ambitions rise in importance. We cannot be nostalgic of this shift back.

As the gallery business slows down and as we try to return and embrace more fundamentals, there are still a few things that have shifted. One of which is the whole paradigm in which artist has seen validated and sold. There has been a shifting as well at the marketplace itself which is totally decentralized. We can look at that critically, as these global gallery franchises are creating a more homogenous market structure. But there

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are real opportunities as well and one fundamental thing: the changing face of the business achieved is the fact that an ambitious gallerist can nowadays work at a remove from these core market centres in New York, London or Paris. That is both interesting and fundamentally incredibly important to the future shape of what all of our businesses will look like.

As all of those things are shifting and as all these questions are being raised, it seems clear to me that establishing the best practices is more and more imperative and hopefully today, tomorrow and in the time to come these issues will be teased out more clearly. “the changing face of the business has achieved is the fact that an ambitious gallerist can nowadays work at a remove from these core market centres in New York, London or Paris”

CONTRIBUTIONS AND QUESTIONS (C/Q) FROM THE AUDIENCE

Q. It is very interesting and we can feel the shifting value in terms of the galleries but what I miss is how people today consume art. I think we don’t insist enough on this part of the ecosystem of art, the shifting audience of art, the shifting way of collecting art. What is important today is not just how the galleries have to shift, they have to shift also the way people are looking at art today.

N.H. That is a correct statement. It is also a question of how people spend time with art as well. Art today is basically clicked on cameras, consumed,

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discussed and then sort of processed or not processed. I think some of what Dorsey Waxter was talking about was just really trying to slow all that down again. And how we achieve that is more or less up to debate but there are ways to do that, and one of them is to maybe say a little bit less but see things in a more deep way.

Q. Why do you think gallery matters today?

N.H. Galleries get valuable precisely because they are the crux of the system and carry all that risk to invest in somebody that they see, in order to create meaning and context around that. If you do not have that in the middle of that system, I do not know where that is coming from. Galleries that do their jobs correctly for the long term, are putting their capital and resources with their full reputation behind something. We live in an age in which things are more temporary, more speculative and I think that a good gallerist is still somebody that can create these structures in a meaningful way, a way that museums, collectors, the press, other people pick up on and that is what they do fundamentally.

Q. How do you think the Arab buyers impact the art market?

N.H. Clearly they are underpinning a certain amount of demand in the marketplace. Museums are being created and filled because they are generating demand. And for certain markets and for certain actors within the international market, obviously it’s having a strong impact. I think all of these chains usually start from the top and then filter down, so I think yes, and the obvious answer to your question is that they are benefiting the same guys who are selling, whose sales went up to 55% year on year and that are selling 10 or more million euros of work. It is clearly benefiting them most, but I think that if it’s done in an intelligent way we will filter down throughout that economy.

Q. In regard to the Internet, well it is a new technology and a great way to get people to know about the art that is out, but people would actually come to a gallery and see it before they would actually purchase it. So in

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that sense the gallery remains very important a tool through which you can find out about new art but actual sales. In the end a lot of these sites that are trying to sell art through the Internet have found that. I would like to know if you have comments on that.

N.H. Galleries as structures and positionalities within the market in my opinion are not going anywhere anytime soon. The Internet is just another conduit or another tentacle for somebody to learn about a gallery and potentially make a sale. I think we will see more and more art sold through those avenues. On the one hand these sites are never going to supplant the gallery business, but it is not going to do that specifically because of the core values of the gallerist ordinarily putting in the market.

Q. What impact do you think the proliferation of art prizes, art awards have had on the ecology of the art world and particularly on galleries?

N.H. It is a good question, it is supposedly a fundamentally good thing, you are basically creating a more direct path for capital to flow into the art world and to support artists. A lot of the prizes are repackaged intelligent sponsorship opportunities in a new way. Corporate partners used to cut a check, put their logo on things, and not ask any more questions. Now we are seeing increasingly active participation in all aspects of the business, from how corporations are involved with museums, to how they are involved with art fairs and getting behind an art prize.

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“Where we are now?”

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Albert Baronian He opened his first gallery in 1973 in Brussels. At the end of the 1970’s, the gallery makes itself known by the first solo exhibitions in Belgium of the representatives of the Arte Povera, such as Alighiero e Boetti, Mario Merz, Giulio Paolini and Gilberto Zorio. In 1981, Albert Baronian goes into partnership with Yvon Lambert starting up a gallery in Ghent, nominating as its head Chris Dercon, future director of Tate Modern in London. From 1987 until 2000 he took up the presidency of the Galleries’ Association in Belgium. During these years the Brussels Art fair took a more international turn whilst under his direction.

Today he is still president of the selection committee of the fair. In 2002 Albert Baronian teamed up with Edmond Francey, followed in 2012 by the welcoming of a new young director, Laurence Dujardyn. Albert Baronian gallery is constantly in the process of renewing itself. en las Bellas Artes and received the F.E.A.G.A. European Gallery Award in June 2009.

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Forty Years in the Trade

SPEAKER Albert Baronian CONCEPTS galleries, artists, economic crisis, art

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Forty Years in the Trade

Before opening my own gallery in my apartment in September 1973, I had produced editions for a year. The time of the first oil crisis, when I had just 250 Dollars in the bank account and had bought four drawings

by Antonio Dias, one of the first Brazilian Conceptual artists. At that time, art was regarded as elitist and there were few gallerists in Europe. I started straight out of university and did not have a clear idea what a gallerist was.

There were few collectors in those days and the people who purchased art could more properly be described as ‘buyers’, as they acquired artworks for their family’s estate and for passing on to the next generation, not to form a collection.

The fact why getting based in Belgium worked in my favour was because there was a small number of important collectors in the country, though there were very few museums. By and large, the public and the institutions at that time were suspicious of art and they saw collecting as dirty and improper.

I studied political science at university, though I was already interested in contemporary art, and the events of 1968 in Paris and the subsequent changes in people’s values made a great impression on me. Starting a gallery was at first a political commitment were I began producing editions as a way to make art universally accessible. From my point of view, the artist is someone who changes the way society looks at things and, despite the fact that I was unable to be an artist myself, I wanted to be an intermediary between artists and the spectator and the bourgeoisie.

Nowadays to open a gallery requires a vast amount of money because an entire economy has grown up around galleries that did not exist when I was starting out. For example, in my early days, artists did not demand special transportation for their works; there were no specialist art printing houses and very few journals; and no-one talked about artistic advisers or society women who mediate between the gallerist and the collector and make

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recommendations. It was a small economy that kept ticking over. My first fair was Basel in 1978. At that time it was much easier to get in to fairs, whereas nowadays, ‘off’ or fringe fairs are full of galleries refused admission to the main event.

The gallery was able to survive when at its early stage thanks to local collectors and a few foreign collectors I had met through the Brussels art fair and the FIAC. I have been to major fairs such as Basel and Cologne, but now hardly goes to any. In my opinion, the situation has arisen where even medium-sized galleries are attending lots of fair, putting pressure on themselves and on their artists, who are producing work solely for fairs.

The direct sale of art by artists to the public has altered since I started.

Initially, work sold in this manner was generally of lesser quality but nowadays artists, especially young artists, are tending to take this approach more frequently, thereby competing in a major way with galleries. In addition, artists are not only selling works but are also producing impressive catalogues.

Brussels too has changed in the time since I began as a gallerist. Numerous galleries in Paris have since opened or moved to Brussels and a number of wealthy French collectors are now domiciled for tax purposes in Belgium. In addition, despite the fact that prices have risen given that Brussels is the capital of Europe, artists from all over Europe as well as the States and Australia have taken studios in the city. Consequently, it is now a major city, but when at the beginning of my career there were very few galleries and no-one visited Brussels. At that time, therefore, fairs were important as they offered me an opportunity to raise awareness of my artists and to meet other gallerists, resulting in exchanges being made, with my artists being given exposure elsewhere and artists from other countries being shown to the Brussels public. These developments had taken place slowly, it is possible that even I contributed to them although I was not duped by this evolution.

I went through a number of very lean years but it has been financially secure since the mid-1990s. The current situation is extremely difficult for young galleries because there is so much competition. When I began, it was not difficult to get big-name artists because Arte Povera, a movement I supported from the outset, really caught people’s attention, but this is very hard to achieve nowadays. In addition, artists today do

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not regard themselves solely as creators of objects but also as managers. If I was a young gallery starting out now, I would be very worried because there are far too many artists and far too many galleries, so there is a lot of competition. Plus, there is a danger ahead and particularly fears the fact that the big galleries such as Zwirner and Gagosian are opening branches in cities around the world and that they will take the most important or biggest international artists. As a result, it will be difficult for medium-sized and small galleries to push their own artists.

I have also witnessed the fashion for galleries to open second and third spaces in their home city, which they justify on the grounds that they offer another showcase and additional potential sales. I question myself of the value of this practice and recommends further study to see whether it is indeed a successful strategy. More importantly, however, it is a symptomatic of the fact that people are forgetting that art is art, not just a product. Even though there is an interest in selling to the public and at fairs, I believe that young galleries should keep their eye on the bigger picture: if they have good artists, then they are on the right track.

The danger, of course, for a new gallery with a promising young artist is that it will eventually risk losing them to a big gallery even though it gave them their start in the world of art.

In conclusion, galleries must never lose sight of the fact that art is not a just a business. It has become a thriving business but it is also a discipline, something that enables gallerists to make a living doing something pleasant and look at the world a bit differently.

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MODERATOR

Ann Demeester Director of de Appel arts centre and head of De Appel Curatorial Programme. Demeester is on the editorial board of the magazine F.R. David, and is the host of the programme 4Art on Dutch National Television. Recently she has published essays on Michael Borremans, Jennifer Tee, Salla Tykka, Sung Hwan Kim and Bjarne Melgaard.

She co-curated the 10th Baltic Triennial (2009). She has recently been appointed Director of the Frans Hals Museum | De Hallen Haarlem.

SPEAKERS

Jeanine Hofland Opened Jeanine Hofland Contemporary Art gallery on October 2010 in Amsterdam. The gallery represents artists who work within a diverse range of media, and takes part in several international art fairs.

Although functioning within the framework of a traditional gallery, Jeanine Hofland Contemporary Art is simultaneously open and critical towards its future and function as such. To support this objective Hofland has found ‘Alongside#’, a side-programme alongside the regular exhibitions. This programme comprises non-gallery-associated activities, such as talks, lectures, critical exhibitions that tap into gallery and discourse related issues, collaborations with local institutions, curators and collectives and the organization and hosting of the annual A Petite Fair.

Lisa Panting In 2005 she co-foundered Hollybush Gardens with Malin Ståhl, before which she taught as a Senior Lecturer at Central Saint Martin’s School of Art and Design. Hollybush Gardens represents young to mid-career artists including Andrea Büttner, Johanna Billing, Karl Holmqvist, Falke Pisano and has recently began working with Lubaina Himid.

The gallery’s programme includes curated exhibitions, events and screenings alongside gallery shows by represented artists. Hollybush Gardens attends art fairs such as Frieze, Frieze NY, Art Basel and Liste, Basel; and is part of The Fair Gallery (along with Jan Mot, Raster and gb agency) a consortia developing The Gallerist programme with de Appel in Amsterdam.

Victor Gisler With a background in economics and business, Gisler founded Mai 36 Gallery in Lucerne in 1987, which would move 6 years later to its current location in Zurich. The Swiss gallerist sat on the Art Basel Committee for 12 years, resigning in 2009. For more than 20 years, Mai 36 Gallery has regularly participated in the main international art fairs: Art Basel, Art Basel Miami Beach, Frieze, FIAC, Armory Show and ARCOmadrid, among others. He lives and works in Zurich. His life is marked by his passion for art, architecture and contemporary design.

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Are galleries still relevant?

In constant need of reinvention

Moderator Ann Demeester SPEAKERS Jeanine Hofland, Victor Gisler, Lisa Panting CONCEPTS supersized galleries, mid-scale galleries, art fairs, curators, education, discourse, artists, business models, audience, social communities, intellectual capital

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Are galleries still relevant?

In constant need of reinvention

ANN DEMEESTER (A.D.) I am not a gallerist, I run a non-profit art centre called De Appel and our only association with the gallery scene is a collaboration with the Fair Gallery, which is the reason why I am here. In preparation of our panel I have read Jerry Saltz’ articles in The New York Magazine, where he expands on a number of clichés that I think rule the art world ecology as we know it right now. And I have also read very praising articles on Colin de Land and American Fine Arts are the curators gallerists.

What struck me was that if we talk about the mid-scale gallery there are a number of clichés that keep on returning. These are the starting point for our panel: are the art galleries still relevant and galleries are in constant need of change and reinvention.

One of them is the constant and incessant stressing of the importance of jumbo and juggernaut supersized galleries. I think last years Talking Galleries we spent half of the time talking about blue chip galleries, how annoying and big they are, and how we could actually avoid them, but it seems to be a returning topic. A second cliché is the disappearance of the mid-scale gallery, that is one of the articles of Jerry Saltz, where he talks about the disappearance of the gallery show, as numerous shops have closed down in the past year and that is a kind of a hint of what is yet to come.

The already commented by Noah Horowitz, mushrooming of fairs, the incessant increase of the number of fairs that we feel we need to attend; maybe also the fetishization of old-school informality and probably my more curatorial approach is that, I feel that amongst young curators, we tend to look at galleries like American Fine Arts, like Wide White

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Space, like MTL, and romanticize the informal approach and the community type of approach they have. And I think the fifth cliché about the gallery world, again more from a curatorial perspective, is the complaint about the contentedness of the gallery as an interface between artistic practice and economical field. We feel that galleries today have a public role, not just a commercial one, but there is an incessant kind of tension or a paradox raining there. What is commercial value, what is public value, and how do we actually talk about that. I would like to place our discussion in the light of those five clichés, but then frame it positively and talk about potentially new models, not of survival for the mid-scale gallery but new models, for the mid-scale gallery to profile itself in a changing art world.

JEANINE HOFLAND (J.H.) I opened a gallery in Amsterdam three years ago. I never had an education to become a gallerist, so I will respond to this questions from my own personal perspective and will pose some other that I am confronted with on a daily basis. “do I need to raise the prices of young artists in order to participate on the international stage?

When this market still needs to be defined, do I therefore need to exclude a younger generation of local buyers?”.

One might think I am crazy or enormously naive to open a gallery in the first place in these current times. As many gallerists I learned the craft through working as an assistant for another gallery. I left my job to find my new role within the art world, quite explicitly no where near a gallery context. Although I loved the centred role of the gallery; the long-term engagements with artists, collectors, curators, critics, and the public, simultaneously I found that role ambiguous and full of contradictions.

But I ended up with the conclusion that a “gallery” itself might actually be the perfect context to research and address such topics, especially due to its non definable, non-excluding and independent character.

Following a certain need for a new platform for an under represented generation in Amsterdam, I opened my space with an emphasis on the

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Are galleries still relevant? In constant need of reinvention

word space. Quite organically I established a relationship with a group of artists who I continued showing, and for whom I wished to create a broader and international platform.

Whilst aiming the latter, I applied for art fairs, and I allowed the gallery to become more and more part of the existing gallery system. Although the art fair extends the activity of my gallery to a larger arena, I am not yet in the financial position to ‘advertise’ or just try-out art fairs randomly, and to be honest we cannot survive by being the curatorial ‘window dressing’ for the commercial top end. For me here lies one of the main cruxes in relation to the question of survival of the young gallery and to start re-thinking the current modus operandi. How am I able to survive, and build a sustainable international orientated ‘business’ model within these current less optimistic financial times, whilst the art world still operates on the bias of a flourishing market?

“I still believe in the relevant, and distinctive character of the gallery to give stage to the new; build upon long term engagements; provide the entrepreneurship in order to let the artist function in an autonomous context; and to sell in order to preserve and contribute to the continuation of the arts”.

Of course every artists aims for international recognition, and it is indeed one of the tasks of a gallery to strive for this according to my opinion.

But do I need to raise the prices of young artists in order to participate on the international stage? When this market still needs to be defined, do I therefore need to exclude a younger generation of local buyers? Is it at the end of the day my function to invest in a career, go bankrupt and donate the whole package to a large-scale gallery, whilst I am left with a beautiful memory? From a personal point of view I still believe in the relevant, and distinctive character of the gallery to give stage to the new; build upon long term engagements; provide the entrepreneurship in order to let the artist function in an autonomous context; and to sell in order to preserve and contribute to the continuation of the arts.

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But to get back to my question how can I as a young gallery maintain this role within the current field? I cannot answer this question, but instead I repeat this question every time I start working with an artist for who I wish to contribute to his or her career. I do believe in art fairs, their essential function, but I also believe a young gallery can gain more sustainability by focusing more on local resources, without losing its essential goal for international recognition of the artist and becoming too provincial.

I think we can all agree that keeping up appearances, ending up with large debts, no money to pay the artists, and opportunistic tendencies of artists heading for better futures will not contribute to a career of an artist nor a gallery from an early stage. I therefore think we should not underestimate the capability of physical space and geographic positions when discussing new models.

To respond to a general assumption of this approach; I am not proclaiming that a gallery should become or even take over the role of the non-profit institutions. To the contrary, I think this tendency is one of the reasons why many young galleries are not able to survive, as they tend to forget that they have to finance their idealism through self-support. I would rather address the capability of the cooperative model for the art field at large in order to maintain the constant renewal of the arts and so the importance of the different leveled galleries.

A.D. Maybe you can answer to some of the further questions during the conversation. I was also suggesting to ask the first question to Victor just to break it up because you mentioned a number of very clear notes as a young gallerist and I wondered how Victor feels about it from his experience. How do you think as a gallerist, from the need of artists, what do artists need at this point and time, in this kind of market? Do artists need galleries? Or do they benefit from having agents or production agencies? Is the infrastructure of the gallery still a necessity not for the audience but for the artists whose career you want to support?

VICTOR GISLER (V.G.) Mai 36 stays for the combination tags and the image is from the National City paintings by John Baldessari in the sixties, this is how I started the gallery. I am now working with the third generation of artists. What I

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Are galleries still relevant? In constant need of reinvention

do is show, tell, and sell. So, I am passionate about what I think amongst the zillions of people doing something for other people called artists. At the same time, I am in a business, which is selling art, so I have to try to connect myself with the collectors and the artists in that business and benefit from it. “I come from a generation where the art of today belongs to us. It is essential. And us are we, and today is the art. If it goes in a direction where it is just a product and we all have a problem to deal with that, we have to find a way to go against it and to promote artists�.

The artists today, I cannot speak from every human being who is doing something for another human being called artist, but I can speak about the people I work with, they still think that the gallery show is essential.

They love the fact that if they show with me they do not have to sell, I never put pressure on them, I want to see what the mind has produced. I kept the gallery space small because I did not want to have that pressure.

I wanted to be free, I did not want to be a super tanker, I could have done it, I do not want that, because this niche, this people to people business is what interests more. You have a dialogue with the artist, you do the show, and in the positive way, something turns out fantastically. Maybe not right now, but over the long run. Because honestly, in the end of the day, we are all doing a cultural work, even though we talk about big galleries, auction houses. I come from a generation where the art of today belongs to us. It is essential. And us are we, and today is the art. If it goes in a direction where it is just a product and we all have a problem to deal with that, we have to find a way to go against it and to promote artists.

A.D. Would you say that as the continuing fundamental role of the gallery?

V.G. There are a lot of artists to come who do not want to go in that alley.

They still have something to say.

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A.D. Why do they need the gallery for that? “in the gallery space the object has a one to one meeting point. An art fair does not serve that way, unless you do a solo project”.

V.G. Because in the gallery space the object has a one to one meeting point.

An art fair does not serve that way, unless you do a solo project. It is very hard in an art fair for an artist with one piece or two pieces to have that flourishing. But when you do a gallery you have the space. I completely agree with Jeanine that since it is a people to people business it is very crucial that you can have this gallery space with the artist and you need the work, but then the system, the art business provides us now selling platforms of art fairs and Internet. The Internet is not the solution to make the connoissance with an artist. Only if you know the artist already, if you see the piece, if you are informed, you may click “Buy”. That has nothing to do with the use of art.

A.D. And how do you make that space sustainable in the changing economy?

V.G. I truly think it is coming out of myself with other people in this room: build up access, defend, maybe even find the way that education is sexy.

“I’m the real deal”.

A.D. As the counterpoint?

V.G. Yes. How can I capitalise education now? We know the career of an artist, the mind of an artist, where he did this and that (…) We could be a great service to collectors. So obviously we have a problem to brand our knowledge in the business model we are in.

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A.D. One of the main questions is how to capitalise in a way your expertise without becoming an advisor?

V.G. Absolutely, and to continue with what you show, the programme. There is a problem for an artist with a great mind who wants to continue with super galleries: the discourse is missing. If it is just reduced to the selling and no discourse, artists that are all about discourse have a hard time.

For instance we mentioned before the Ad Reinhardt show, which is a great way for David Zwirner to tell the people he knows about art.

This is an artists’ artist, his market has been very complicated, he is not under radar, but Zwirner is demonstrating that he has the knowledge, the taste and that he is showing this in New York and that nothing is for sale. Any sophisticated buyer or collector would say, “Wow, this is cool”.

Education it’s already there. He is trying to do that, in his way. And I do not see why mid-size galleries are not capable.

A.D. Maybe this is something, Lisa, incorporating your statement, could respond to. In a way it reads like capitalising expertise, or maybe selling the curatorial, the component that you are good at and is maybe undervalued within the blue chip system. But I am curious Lisa, how you would respond to these questions and indirectly also to Victor. Why you have to capitalise the discourse in order to survive?

LISA PANTING (L.P.) What I wanted to do actually, is to back step and give a very brief overview to our activities, which have a lot to do with these questions.

Malin Ståhl and I were inspired to open the gallery because one of our last not-for-profit projects had been commissioning the Swedish artist Johanna Billing to make new work, and this relationship became a cornerstone for how we began to think about the potential of a gallery.

She was unrepresented and she also represented within a UK context the kind of work that offered a counterpoint to what was happening in the UK. The advent of Frieze Art Fair in 2003 cemented this thinking as we could see an opportunity, where commercial and institutional concerns might blend with our concept for a gallery. We realised that we were very interested in the potential role of a gallery in evolving an artist’s career and practice. So at the end of 2005 we opened a small space in

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Bethnal Green, London. We were inspired by some European models of gallery making that we thought seemed conceptually rigorous and artist centered. We did not want to put together an artist list from other peoples programmes, we wanted to forge our way.

“We have evolved to enable artists to develop thinking and take new directions as well as offering audiences different access points into artists work”.

We work on a blend of the commercial, the curatorial and the educational.

We have evolved to enable artists to develop thinking and take new directions as well as offering audiences different access points into artists work. For example a residency in the countryside in Sweden, where we commissioned 20 artworks that were placed in the public realm. We have always had a large number of students through the gallery and often collaborated with university research projects. Now currently with a project at Goldsmiths with several research questions including relating market and institutional data analysis to existing concepts of art’s value formed through artistic-critical, art historical, cultural, economic and sociological research. We are also involved with the Gallerist program at De Appel working with Ann and colleagues through the invented The Fair Gallery, Jan Mot, gb Agency and Raster.

A.D. Lisa, you talk about this mix between the commercial, the curatorial and the educational, so how do you make that economically viable? Because I can see the beauty ideologically in each of your statements, which go in, a very similar direction, but I do not see how you can make that economically viable for yourselves and for the artists.

L.P. An example of such activity, it’s an exhibition with Andrea Büttner where we gave her the platform to blend her curatorial and artistic practice through which certain questions emerged and let her to make a particular body of work. So, this is a project which is completely non commercial in a commercial space, we did not sell anything from this show. But the thinking that she developed with this project to something

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Are galleries still relevant? In constant need of reinvention

that becomes artwork became a curated show at David Kordansky Gallery in L.A. There is potential to use this knowledge that is generated.

A.D. You also need to provide really long lines to create revenue.

L.P. Yes, but that is the game, you do not make shows for a short-term return, that does not really happen unless you happen to have whatever is of the moment. If you put on a New York abstract show right now in London, probably you would sell it. But if you are actually interested in cultivating your artists and creating a discourse you need to think about it differently. “we have more buyers than collectors. The buyers today are everywhere�

V.G. It is a very good question because in the end we are in a situation that we have more buyers than collectors. The buyers today are everywhere and you need a kind of sophistication for what she just showed us. She is trying to educate the people within the system and this builds access.

The problem we all have is that from the gallery itself, we have too little return of sales. Lets say some have 20%, some have 40% (...) In the art fairs we play against the biggest and pay the same rent. And now you take a project like that. This is for sure something for very few people in an art fair, this kind of program needs a very sophisticated group. The gallery has to pay an enormous rent at that place, to promote that thing.

Already when you start it is lost, unless it has a lucky punch with one of the sophisticated big collectors that a curator brings to that booth.

L.P. Well this is not an art fair presentation, I would not do this in an art fair.

I mean, this is more using the gallery as a laboratory. That is what we can do, that is how I see our role really. And that is our commitment.

A.D. But can you extrapolate that to another model or is it just that your models are individually so specific that we cannot make abstraction

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of them and institutionalise them using it as a framework for a new generation. Is it that every gallery has a device?, its own little system of survival by itself? Or can we make abstraction and have a bird’s eye perspective? Can you distil such statements from your own practice that can be applied and used by other people?

L.P. We realised three years ago that we really needed to get bigger in order to be more visible physically. Because we were in a quite small space, hidden away in a complicated building. We had to find the capital to make that transition, because London is saturated by big galleries. So we needed to have a street front more of a presence. I really believe in defending this way of working. I think is more about bringing people in and that is an educating strategy. We are really under pressure, whatever scale of gallery, to perform this kind of notion. Somewhere, somehow we need to communicate this more clearly as a strategy, or communicate the difference. Because the activity within the mid to small or whatever gallery is being lost. People just see an image of an exhibition and make huge assumptions about the kind of commercial aspiration of your programme.

A.D. Do you think that it should be done through more extensive collaborations and it is not just a straightforward collaboration on fairs, or what Noah pointed out like there is more strategic efficiency collaboration? Is collaboration possible on another level or even necessary?

V.G. Well I have always collaborated with colleagues in fairs because at the beginning when Frieze came I did not know what it was, and I wanted to sniff around, same did Claes, so we did it together. The Armory and other fairs, I did with other people. Because in the end of the day you have to balance your costs. You can be the coolest guy but if you go under you have to have different hacks to play with. The collaboration is also good for the artist to expand and it is also great for the collaboration between artists. Today the problem is that younger galleries and midsize galleries like me, since there is no critical authority anymore, since everything is only good if it is big and sold for a lot of money, it is essential to find a way in the market to brand the culture you have.

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Are galleries still relevant? In constant need of reinvention

A.D. And how do you think that could be done?

V.G. To give you an example of the real one to one. Last year in the Paris art fair, an art advisor comes to my booth. He has of course seen the Baldessari’s, the most expensive art on my booth, and he wants to sell it to one of his clients. So the client is a buyer not a collector, he has money, but he is a virgin. So he looks at the work and I can see that he listens to the art advisor who explains that it is a really important piece. So then I come into the picture and ask if he would like to know something about the artist and if the price is enough. So I started to talk and, it took fifteen minutes. I had to pull out the books and he said that it was a really interesting artist, he did not know about him. This is the reality; how could he not know? But that is the reality today. So there is a place for us, but of course it is frustrating to see that some of my colleagues and myself have the most expensive work in price lists on the art fairs.

A.D. How do you remedy that?

J.H. You should be realistic and adjust to the financial situation. From my perspective I do not go with the pressure of doing all the art fairs, because I think that is very important that the young galleries sustain and do not go bankrupt. If you would adapt to that and try to focus on what you have in your space, I think that can be against the mainstream.

A.D. How do you create more visibility for that more public educational side of the programme that makes you different? I mean, while staying local and focusing on the space...

J.H. It depends on where you are geographically, but if you are in Amsterdam like me, there are so many interesting institutions that you can collaborate with who have networks internationally.

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L.P. One way is to work quite closely with curators and institutions, I think that is really important. We prioritise that and focus on it. Also something that we had not paid attention to until a couple of years ago is how we invite people into the gallery. Now we do a few simple brunches and breakfasts and manage to get interest from people. If you manage to get people to stay for more than half an hour then you can maybe start a dialogue, and people start to see you as a person who has information.

V.G. Who has a passion about what they do? In an ideal world you would have the passion - the intellectual part-, mixed with the capacity of being a social lion in your town. Everybody knows when you go anywhere, so they want to see you and go to your gallery. At the same time, you can educate them and make collectors out of them. But these days, with the life we live is very hard. It is a gift to have this capacity. Overall, at the beginning it is the curatorial part and after, that we see it at the art fairs. So you try to do a great booth and show what you like. People go around and do not know you at the beginning, but maybe in the next fair they remember you, and then at the third fair they see you and already think of you as interesting gallery. So you can build a network.

In every generation there is always some young artists and gallerists who have great ideas about what they see today and maybe, are relevant tomorrow. This is what we have to defend in the system, because again, it is a cultural work. It would not be interesting if only the artists and the gallerists knew how to sell the fastest.

A.D. Maybe I have searched in vain to hear from you a kind of formula.

Because you talk about creating communities, is about the gallery as a social space where not only art is sold and is part of a transaction but part of a conversation. To make a process in people who want to educate themselves, who want to be amazed and surprised, but that sounds like a reversal to a very old model. How can you take that model into the future?

L.P. We are social animals, we require contact, and from my experience of selling you need to be in the same room. I do not have great experiences of trying to sell online, maybe because of the kind of work we represent,

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but I do not know if I can answer that question. I would wish that was perhaps more of a community amongst galleries that feel this way. There is maybe a P.R. job that could happen, because people do not really know amongst the younger well known galleries necessarily what you might stand for. So maybe there is a way of creating a forum that is whether a website or a place where people write. I think a space for galleries to actually start articulating some of their ideas and putting them out there does not happen so much anymore.

A.D. A journal for gallery studies.

V.G. Models change all the time, I am from a generation where my model is Leo Castelli or Sidney Janis. They are so old-fashioned, no one hardly remembers them. But younger people now want to learn about it. Ann, you mentioned Colin de Land for instance, who we used to hang out with in those days. He did not have it balanced. It was not that gallery, he really suffered and it was really artists’ artist space, so he went passed.

And you Lisa mentioned Konrad Fischer, who supplied the art system.

He had a great eye, there is always people who have that, and they supply.

This is what we have to defend within the system. The system has the fairs, the Internet, but it is still art. A great quote we should never forget from Albert Baronian, that is art and maybe it is sexy to talk about that.

Maybe it is time that even art fair people understand that they should not only be real state sellers, that they should really start to create.

A.D. They should hire you to promote that message, because you have been very convincing.

CONTRIBUTIONS AND QUESTIONS (C/Q) FROM THE AUDIENCE Q/C. I have two questions, the first is to Lisa just to explain what the Fair Gallery is and how it operates, because I have heard a lot about it and I am generally curious. For the smaller and mid level galleries there is

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some relevance commercially, but also critically to the power of networks and I think what you are doing is interesting. The second is more to Ann, there is this whole romanticisation of somebody like Colin de Land as you brought it up as well. Colin de Land was also the founder of the Gramercy International, which is the predecessor of The Armory Show so, how do we digest this fact that a lot of these fairs were basically set in motion by these dealers, and that their legacy actually was to create the system that it is now devouring their core business.

And is not just Colin, for instance Rudolf Zwirner with Art Cologne, Ernst Beyeler with Art Basel, James Cohan with the VIP Art Fair, Elizabeth Dee and Darren Flook with Independent. Many of the great fairs were all started by dealers who were trying to think how to create a sustainable model for their business. Now we are at this weird state where we are talking about that models devouring their business.

A.D. I explicitly mentioned Colin de Land as the curators’ gallerist. What was very obvious during the first session of Talking Galleries is that the whole discussion on the model of the art fair is something that it has been discussed within for the profit field and not in a non-profit field. It is not a curatorial discussion, it is almost purely an economical discussion within the commercial art field. The opposite is that the more curatorial perspective is a glorifying gallerist, who has done excellent work on the level of public programming or creating diversity, may be economically just went bankrupt and busted. I wanted to point that out as a discrepancy or a paradox. I cannot really answer the question about gallerists proposing models that then become a monster that devours gallery practice. I think that is much more something for people who are in the field, because I can only observe it from the far.

L.P. The Fair Gallery was an initiative to try and find colleagues and bring together those that shared that interest in working on what we have been talking about. We were initially approached by gb Agency really quite early on. In 2006 when participating at NADA in Miami, the Raster Gallery appeared in our booth and started talking to us. We found out later on that they were both checking us out to see whether we would be suitable bedfellows for this collaboration. The idea initially was to invite a curator to curate a booth under the pseudonym of The Fair Gallery

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Are galleries still relevant? In constant need of reinvention

as an art fair. The Fair Gallery manifested itself twice in this way, Frieze Art Fair in 2007 and 2008. After the 2008 experience, which was curated by Pierre Bal-Blanc, it was a very beautiful presentation with a big David Lamelas installation and also some great works by Andrea BĂźttner, Michal Budny, Pratchaya Phinthong, etc. In 2008 no one sold a thing and it was the end of it in that format. Despite our aspirations to work curatorially within the fair, we realised that the price was too high, we could not afford to take this risks. So we tried to find a new venue for the activities of The Fair Gallery, but we still wanted to carry on with this network of colleagues. Jan Mot had the idea to approach Ann Demeester to think about the possibilities of developing what has become The Galleries Programme. We are still trying to work out what exactly is and what other kind of projects we might develop in the future.

A.D. As a return question to Noah and to Lisa, do you know of any other type of collaboration between galleries on such a level? Where is not just being together at the fair but it is also developing another type of discourse together.

L.P. No, I do not actually, I was going to sight the Raster’s Gallery Villa project in Warsaw and Villa in Reykjavík as another kind of space or platform to try and bring people together in a slightly different way.

C/Q. I would say that perhaps the key is how to turn the buyer into a collector.

In my opinion in the past there were a few fairs, so the buyer would go to a gallery to learn, the place to be face to face with a gallerist to understand the work of the artist. But nowadays there is such a big amount of art fairs that the buyer is not going to the gallery anymore, he goes straight to the art fair without learning. Probably the collector is used to see art and it is able to understand what is going on in an art fair, but the buyer cannot. My question is that perhaps the gallery is very important because it is the place to learn, therefore we have to teach the buyers to be collectors in the gallery. I do not think this would be possible at an art fair.

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J.H. I think for example the gallery weekends are very great for that. People are really dragged into the spaces.

V.G. The question was how do you get the people back into the gallery instead of the fairs and what you said Jeanine is one example, and as we learn to try to be very subversive it does not work in the business itself because it is the habit of making it. To get the people into the gallery is to connect yourself with the people in town, with people who think the same way, you have to use your space for performances, or films or other educational things, trying to get the attention of the few people in your local reach. The buyers do not live around the corner anymore that is why the Internet and the art fairs are used. It is very hard to go against the size and the price because those are for the people that have a determination of being important, because there is no voice who can say this is important or not. I was in a generation of Harald Szeemann, Konrad Fischer and Leo Castelli, and if they showed something, it was important. Today there is no one out there. Except someone that shows a young artist that does not have big shows, but that is a quarter of a million and tomorrow is going to sell for 500,000 so you better buy it now.

Q. I have a question concerning collaborations with universities and art schools, because in other fields of knowledge these are very important.

Do galleries need to interact more with universities and art schools as they are the first step of knowledge?

V.G. It is happening, I can only speak for Zurich. If I have a show, for example, the last exhibition from the Czech photographer Jitka Hanzlovรก, a photography professor came with a class. Every year since I have the gallery I go for one day to the art school and I am at their service, free of charge. I go and I talk, answer the questions they have, because they see the real ape, I am a gallerist, and I have to teach them the real thing, that they have to believe in themselves as artists.

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C. In order to come to a solution, I have to say that gallerists originally were a gallerist without an art fair but then they joined forces and started art fairs, so there is no enemy there, because the people at the art fairs are gallerists. There should be collaboration between the people at the art fair instead of working against each other.

Q. Just a very precise question to Lisa. What was the initial purpose of The Fair Gallery project and what are your expectations now to continue with this project?

L.P. Expectations are unclear, we do not have the next manifestation for it or the next platform. At the moment we have been involved with De Appel, but we have inserted ourselves much more into that programme this year. We are much more actively mentoring the students this year and meeting them. When we started, it was just an experimental thing, it was a connection between colleagues who shared some ideas and who got along. For us it was a way of building a community. From a UK perspective, which was a lonely place, we were willing to have conversations, so we felt that we needed to step out of our context to have them.

A.D. Thank you very much Lisa, Jeanine and Victor for this chaotic but lively panel. I do not think I can summarise it although Victor has done a very good job in trying to brand one statement for this panel as “Capitalise your expertise”, or “Increase your intellectual capital”, as Lisa would say.

I am sure that we can have a more precise definition of what that means and I hope you touch again upon this notion of collaboration between galleries. Potentially new examples of that will arise.

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Alain Servais Art collector, investment banker and entrepreneur. Servais started collecting art in the late 1990s. In 2000, he moved into a 900-square meter old factory, which he transformed into a three-storey loft, located in a working-class neighbourhood of northern Brussels. This is where he lives and works, as well as showing his contemporary art collection.

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A RESISTANCE ECOSYSTEM: how galleries can position themselves in today’s polarized art market

SPEAKER Alain Servais CONCEPTS galleries, artists, auction houses, evolution and development, clusters, collaboration, art market, Internet

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A RESISTANCE ECOSYSTEM: how galleries can position themselves in today’s polarized art market

First of all why am I here? I’m a collector but I’m also an investment banker. I “manage” information and that is what people are willing to pay for. Sometimes those observations that I am making are allowing me to make good financial decisions, which eventually pay the bills and some art. I will be trying to use those skills to analyze the current context of the art market and maybe suggest some solutions.

We have been talking about galleries and how galleries could find a solution to their problems. I think one solution is first of all to take a step back and to involve more people than galleries alone. Galleries alone cannot find solutions to their problems. Cooperation is a necessity.

The art market: an evolution So what kind of world are we stepping in? It is a world that a lot of industries have known for a long time. Think about the watch industry in Switzerland. Who would have thought that in the 1980s the Swiss watch industry would be on its knees, close to totally disappearing and killed by the Japanese industry? It is a natural cycle of evolution that the art industry has not yet lived through. The art market was until recently a small industry with little money involved, living under the “financialization” radar. Things have changed dramatically quickly.

To illustrate this I don not need to go any further than look at the evolution of EU, USA and HK auction of art created by artists born after 1950 – defined here as contemporary art. Looking back into the data I could not believe that as recently as 2000, the total was 41 mln USD. A total you would find at an evening sales at Phillips today. Today this figure is

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in the region of 850 mln USD or a factor of 20.7 in 14 years.

There is no reason to doubt that the increase of turnover is of the same proportion in galleries.

Suddenly, this is not a hobby anymore but this kind of money will bring professionalization and (‌) greed.

Let us try first to understand what the source of this wall of money is in order to assess how durable it could be.

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This cycle started in the Reagan-area of the end of the 70s. One day, that “cowboy” from the U.S. diagnosed that the U.S. economy was almost dead. No innovation, no development coming out of the previous crisis.

So he said: “Okay, I’m going to slash capital gain tax from 39% to 20%”.

And he showed that in fact by doing so, the deficit was getting smaller.

It seems technical and stupid, but it started a ball rolling and that ball rolling is the increase in the income share of the top 1% as over the years a competition to the tax bottom went on.

It is not only about taxes but also about capitalist risk-takers seeking or taking advantage of big opportunities, just like China has offered a fantastic one. China opened up not because they are generous to foreigners, it is just because they observed: “We’ve got 20 million peasants, coming to the cities every year, if we don’t find them a job, after 10 years we’ve got 200 million unemployed in the cities and we lose the system, the communist system”. So they opened special economic zones and Western capitalists rushed in. The Chinese were very satisfied because they were not looking for profits, they were just looking for employing their countrymen and women. Then the Iron Curtain fell down too and the world market increased by billions more workers and consumers.

Also the raw materials usage increased dramatically, spreading wealth to countries like Brazil, Central Asia, Middle East.

The result is what we have today: the 1% is now controlling above of 20% of the income at the term of a long cycle. The cycle will turn down and that is what is important, I do not know when, but it will turn down.

This concentration of huge wealth had two consequences: 1. It has been pushing up art prices but also prices of absolutely all assets attractive to this “surplus” money: real estate, wine, collection cars, jewelry, stamps, etc.

A two-university long-term study has shown that the most relevant variable explaining art price movements is the concentration of income at the top or expressed in reversed, the income inequality.

A definitely disappointing conclusion for those who believe in the “humanist” qualities of art.

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Christopher Knight. Los Angeles Times Art Critic 2. That “new money” was bringing with it “different” tastes and certainly less sophistication to art. I would not go as far as Charles Saatchi1 in describing those new buyers but I have no doubt on a certain standardization, safety and conservatism they brought with them.

Auction houses as “cold” corporate entities were the first to develop a “larger bucket” to catch this money rain and particularly Christie’s with a dream team of Philippe Ségalot, Dominique Lévy and Amy Cappellazzo. They introduced the auction of emerging artists at the end of the 90’s, refined the event-driven drive of buying at auction, “curated” their sales more and more to the taste of the public, multiplied the number of 1“Do

any of these people actually enjoy looking at art? Or do they simply enjoy having easily recognised, big-brand name pictures, bought ostentatiously in auction rooms at eye-catching prices, to decorate their several homes, floating and otherwise, in an instant demonstration of drop-dead coolth and wealth. Their pleasure is to be found in having their lovely friends measuring the weight of their baubles, and being awestruck.” Charles Saatchi, The hideousness of the art world, The Guardian, 2 December 2011

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auctions and their formats, reinforced very effective marketing strategies to create the hype even when the quality does not justify it, developed their massive information advantage into more private sales and lately even went as far as opening selling exhibitions spaces and not only for auction material but also straight from the primary market.

More recently, they even developed a deadly weapon for attracting more sellers and even artists directly. Online auctions where results are not made public, ideal if you do not want to “burn” unsold lots or undermine primary prices for artists while allowing them sales.

A group of galleries among the most prominent and the most entrepreneurial also identified this “wave of money” and decided to develop “larger buckets” too – Andrea Glimcher from Pace once used this expression with me –. They identified art fairs as a key weapon to compete on the field of event-driven buying with auction houses. From there, they adopted “branding” strategies similar to the ones of the luxury goods industry – striking similarities between the two industries to be further investigated–. But it all came at a cost or rather a heavy burden of fixed costs which include staff – and particularly “qualified” sales staff – real estate for multiple locations, art production, catalogue editing and art fairs participation among the most important.

The important consequence of this fixed costs burden is that those Megagalleries – as I nickname them – have no time for developing an artist anymore. Selling is the priority and the organisation is run more and more along those lines. It started another industry-changing trend: the “brutal” competition over artists2 as top-selling artists, Very Bankable Artists or VBA’s as I call them. This “brutal” competition has other pervert consequences like “defensive” gallery openings (artists want to show in multiple cities and collaborating with “competitors” opens the door to poaching: see Marc Glimcher in same article or Emmanuel Perrotin3 in the Art Newspaper) fixed salaries paid to artists, gigantic and risky “art production” which are all contributing to higher fixed costs.

In addition, this whole system involving new and often “entrepreneurial” money with herd-effect of luxury branding by the Mega-galleries coupled with auction houses as perfect flipping-outlets, instilled in the 2 Marc Glimcher, It’s Become Extremely Brutal”: Pace’s Marc Glimcher on What’s Driving the Gallery’s Splashy London Expansion, Artinfo, 2 July 2012

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market a heavy dose of speculation which is unfortunately spreading to even the most seasoned collectors. We would not care so much if it was only concerning those few hundreds of individuals at the top of the market, but this drive for the money rather than the art is polluting if not endangering the whole ecosystem which should support the creation and distribution of art.

Indeed more and more of those top galleries have been extending their “hunt” for VBA’s at the lower level. Do I have to remind cases like Murakami moving from Boesky to Gagosian or Trecartin from Elizabeth Dee to Andrea Rosen or Adel Abdessemed from Kamel Menour to Zwirner, etc.

“The essential take-out from this diagnosis would be to accept once and for all that the art market is not a “subsidiary activity” anymore but an “industry”.

How are those tier two galleries supposed to hold their ground at a table where the “chip minimum” is more and more expensive if they lose with no compensation their best-selling artists? This all leave us schematically with three gallery-tiers: the Mega-galleries, the mid-size and the emerging ones. Only the top tier is thriving in the current circumstances. The emerging ones are doing ok in their first year of existence but as soon as their artists mature they are faced with difficult choices and forced to take a more business-like approach. Too many of them prefer to close even if they reached the “nirvana” of Liste or Fiac rather than compromise with their vision. Examples are numerous around my country: Tulips and Roses, Hoet Beckaert, Vidal Cuglietta, Sebastien Ricou. The mid-size ones are squeezed under higher and higher fixed costs and are often faced with the difficult dilemma of “Grow or Go” with some taking a shot at the top league – Spruth Magers,Sean Kelly,Lehmann Maupin – and some quitting with interesting insights in their “lot”,such as d’Amelio Terras, Nicole Klagsbrun and Jérôme de Noirmont.

The essential take-out from this diagnosis would be to accept once and for all that the art market is not a “subsidiary activity” anymore but an “industry”. It seems obvious for many, but I keep meeting art market

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participants who still seem to be in for the way of living, remaking the world till 2am and in the gallery or studio at 11am, rather than for what needs to be done to find his or her relevance.

Art industry’s foundations, structures and infrastructure Starting from this observation that the art market is now an “industry”, one path to the future is to reinforce its foundations, structure and infrastructure. The first and essential step at this point is to define at an industry level what best practices is as the art market looks more like the Far West than any sustainable business. These best practices would be cast into model contracts which would replace the dangerous handshake way of doing business currently. Those best practices and model contracts would be decided after swift discussions among visionary representatives of the art market stakeholders: artists, collectors, three tiers of galleries, institutions directors and of course not too many lawyers.

This implies the constitution of professional associations starting with the three gallery tiers despite the fierce individualism of most gallerists.

Otherwise we would go on with the void, which is never a void as so well explained by Nicholas O’Donnel3 from Stropheus Art Law at a NYSBA event, or with making the fortune of lawyers by negotiating contracts case by case and depending on the different parties’ negotiating strength.

Do not be scared. This is the normal development of an industry. Are you not using model contracts for buying a house, a car, a vacuum cleaner and for hiring employees or for buying an insurance?What if nothing changed? It is a real possibility as conservatism is pervading the art world in its organisation.

I received an email from a keen and ideally positioned observer: Annette Schönholzer from Art Basel.

She wrote: “The situation across SE-Asia and China is even more precarious, where the gallery system as we know it, and which still is widely taken for granted in the western hemisphere, is neither deeply rooted nor has established and reliable relationships and responsibilities between galleries, artists, collectors, auction house, art fairs, etc.”

3

Nicholas O’Donnel, The rise of NYC Art Fairs NYSBA Event Part 2, Stropheus, 10 September 2014.

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It could be a model of a dark future in a “winner-takes-all” art market: dominating auction houses fighting for VBA’s with Mega-galleries and VBA’s more often represented by agents. Around them would live “exhibiting” galleries without a deep involvement in the artist’s development.

Let me list some relationships in urgent need of contracts, as the multiplication of expensive litigations or alternatively power abuses is the best evidence that the definition of those best practices and model contracts are essential at this point: – At the time of the purchase too many withdrawals from buyers but also from galleries. But see also Steinkamp vs Rhona Hoffman.

– Between galleries and artists: is it acceptable that the gallery’s main asset -into which sometimes many years have been invested- can walk through the door at any time and without any compensation? Football clubs have found a way to compensate for this training4. Why would it be impossible in the art world?

But on the other side, is it normal as well that a gallery could neglect a more difficult artist in his rooster while making him or her harder to show somewhere else?

I also had to intervene more than once into dispute between galleries and artists, when an artist wants to get back works, which have not been the objects of proper consignment contracts. And finally, how many conflicts arise between different galleries representing an artist if one gallery is selling a work which is stored in an another gallery?

– Between collectors and artists: it is known that Buren is refusing to issue certificates to collectors before an auction sale. In addition, see cases like Cady Noland vs. Marc Jancou and Murakami vs. Boesky or Kreuk vs Danh Vo,Sobel vs. Eggleston.

– Between collectors and gallerists: see Perelman vs. Gagosian, Cowles vs Gagosian, Hoffman vs Levy.

– Between the collector and the artist and his gallerist for reproducible media as photography, video or digital art: there is absolutely no understanding by galleries and therefore by artists that the rights and duties of both parties should be clearly stated before buying reproducible media. Exhibition rights?

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Nicolai Hartvig, Art Basel opens in time of turbulence for dealers, The New York Times, 11 June 2013.

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Preservation? Editions? In addition, see the case of Sobel vs.

Eggleston.

– Between art advisors and collectors: see Maleki vs. Amir Shariat and Achenbach vs Albrecht.

Towards a Resistance Ecosystem Besides those essential industry-wide elements of structure and infrastructure, I note the difficulty of challenging art to still flourish and develop. I remember separate conversations I had with serious and dedicated gallerists: Philippe Valentin of Chez Valentin in Paris and Anita Beckers in Frankfurt. Both came to the same conclusion: “Programs are getting artistically better and better but we sell less and less”. It is indeed more and more difficult to support oneself while presenting non“financial” or non-fashionable art in the context described above. How can the “little” resist in front of true “war machines”? Then one night I watched a documentary about the French resistance during WWII. I was impressed by the way people from totally different background and beliefs put aside their differences in order to achieve one goal.

I am very far from comparing auction houses, mega galleries and their clients to the oppressors but I was impressed by what the concentration of their forces could achieve, even confronted with overwhelming power. And I believe now that this collaboration across the fences is the solution to let “different” art blossom under the shadow of the big art market tree. In times of changes and crisis you need to think outside of the box, outside of the usual way of thinking.

Two axes to this Resistance Ecosystem: 1. Professionalisation of galleries I find too rarely galleries having anything else than a road map as business plans, that consists often mainly of art fairs participation if they are achievable. So much focus is on the art fairs they love to hate that they forget about necessary improvements in their operation.

Galleries should decide what to do with their gallery space as so many complain that the number of visitors is decreasing sometimes dramati-

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cally. An option could be to spend more energy in “animating” the space, shaping it as a “forum” where visitors and collectors can meet, exchange, learn and eventually buy.

Another sector where galleries are lagging the wider economy is their adoption of technology to improve their operational efficiency. How easy but also how rare is it still to find .pdf of catalogues on the website, to record and put online talks with artists or experts, participate to developing sales online, communicate via Twitter or Instagram, etc. Online sales are still in their infancy but if they can increase sales by 10-15% a year without expensive efforts and with new clients, why to neglect the possibility? A company like Safiniart can produce four videos of gallery shows a year for 1500 EUR. Why to neglect the potential impact of moving images?

In my travel it still happens too often that gallery personnel can hardly speak the art world “lingua franca”, English. It is a must. Galleries complain about the lack of visitors but so often they adopt opening hours that do not take into account the schedule of their potential visitors. Sometimes it gets to the point where only “unemployed” can visit them. Is this the objective? Why don’t they consider one late night opening or some Sunday’s ones? Of course this should be done in the context of whole clusters.

Programs exist now where gallery owners can receive advices and recommendations from elder colleagues like the De Appel’s gallerists program.

Galleries’ communication has no imagination, neither any interest, in what is expected from the recipient. Those recipients can have different interests but galleries’ communication is indiscriminate and bulk. It should be different for existing collectors of an artist, be more targeted and focused on relevant information like museum acquisitions.

Crowdfunding is a resource available for supporting interesting projects.

Galleries should consider it professionally in some cases.

2. Cooperation across the fences between galleries, artists, collectors, institutions, critics, curators and media:

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- Between gallery and artists It is the first relationship and the most essential to secure as discovering artists and helping them to develop should be the central purpose of a gallery.

I often feel a growing distance between galleries and their artists. Both parties are responsible: artists often do not want to commit to more than a show or a few shows, expecting the next Mega gallery to discover their potential. And in consequence galleries do not want to invest too much in an artist who could leave them at any moment despite “eternal love” vows (…) It is a loose-loose relationship. As described earlier, a balanced industry-wide contract should be established as currently artists most often refuse to sign any contract as they do not feel able to judge the fairness.

Exceptions to those model contracts like for any model contracts would be possible in a case-by-case negotiation. It is urgent.

- Between galleries Gallerists, particularly the old school ones, are fierce individualists who consider that cooperation, particularly between “old and new school”, are very often difficult. But a tight collaboration and the compromises necessary to reach it are not an option if they want to resist the powerful competition of auction houses, mega galleries and art fairs. Unfortunately the “old school” is still often holding the reins in selection committees for clusters like Arte Madrid or Neca in Bruxelles or in art fairs selection committees.

The establishment but most importantly the proper animation of “clusters” is a potentially effective response to the “entertainment” effect of art fairs. Clusters exist in Madrid with dr Fourquet, in NY with the lower East side, in Paris Belleville, etc. But this “proper animation” is too often missing squeezed between personal rivalries and wrong priorities in an international context. A sad example of this was the Dansaert cluster in Brussels, which has now died.

I also note and appreciate effective international collaboration between similar galleries like Jocelyn Wolff in Paris and Labor in Mexico or city exchanges like in Brussels Cologne Contemporary.

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- Between public authorities and galleries It does not always have to come under the form of subsidies. Latitude in Brazil offers extensive support to local galleries attracting collectors and curators to the country, and help them projecting themselves abroad.

They help in the consolidation of transport and other similar logistical tasks.

Kunstkoop in Holland and recently an initiative in Sydney, Australia are supporting the purchase of contemporary art by offering standardised and cheap or even free credit for this purpose. Bam in Belgium is organizing multiple times a year the visit of opinion makers from abroad and offer them an insight into the Belgian art scene.

- Between galleries and collectors Collectors have their responsibilities too and far from me to present them all as “saints”. Production of works of art is one of the key competitive advantage of “wealthier” galleries. Collectors and galleries should collaborate in a mutual profitable relationship for producing specific works.

A few years ago, Emmanuel Perrotin had the foresight to create a “production”. I do not know why the initiative was abandoned then but in my opinion it has a future, particularly in helping smaller galleries to support their best artists.

Another area where smaller galleries are at a loss versus larger ones is in being able to afford supporting the price of their artists coming up at auction. But this support is essential for the future “marketability” of the artist as few collectors do not check the usual price databases. Many gallerists shrug at auction prices pretending that “it is not the same industry” but it is an insane mistake or blindness as for more and more collectors buying in galleries or at auction is taking two parallel paths to the same art. One solution has been adopted by forward looking galleries: it is to warn interested collectors in their artist that a work is coming up at auction, to describe its context and its retail value. If only one collector compete with other bidders, it can bring the price to a level which is a win-win situation for the collector, the gallery and the artist.

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Lastly, it is the responsibility of collectors complaining about the standardization of “fair art” to make the effort to visit, promote and support galleries outside of the mainstream. I see them too rarely there.

- Between media, critics, institutions and collectors In the same vein as the cross-support described up to now, it is all stakeholders’ responsibility to support all other stakeholders. It can be publications like e-flux journals, Mousse or Frieze or pioneering institutions around the world like ICA in London, Witte de With in Rotterdam, Wiels in Brussels, SMAK in Gent or Mukha in Antwerpen, Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros in Mexico, la Maison Rouge and le Plateau in Paris, KW in Berlin and the large numbers of non-profits providing an unmissable support to pioneering art.

Conclusion The art market is at a historical turn. Many paths are opened to its future. I am hoping that galleries and other stakeholders will realize the necessity of making necessary radical changes. Without those changes, the survival of the existing gallery ecosystem is far from a letter in the box.

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MODERATOR

Ainhoa Grandes Massa Director of the MACBA Foundation since 1999. Grandes has a degree in Management and Business Administration from the Universitat Internacional de Catalunya, Barcelona (UIC). Specialist in marketing, cultural management and patronage having taken courses at ESADE, EADA and at New York Univeristy (NYU). As an art investment adviser, she worked for five years at Sotheby’s auction company in Barcelona, Madrid and London. She is also cofounder and partner of Contempla, a company dedicated to the production and organization of cultural events. She also works as an advisor for private contemporary art collections.

SPEAKERS

María de Corral Art Critic and Independent Curator based in Madrid. Co-Director of 51 Venice Biennale, 2005. Hoffman Family Adjunct Senior Curator for the Dallas Museum of Art, 2005-2008. Presently Chief Curator of Colección Arte Contemporáneo (Museo Patio Herreriano) and Co-Director Expo Actual SL. Director of Telefónica Foundation Collection (2002-2006). Director of the Contemporary Art Collection of Fundación “la Caixa”1985-2002). Director of the Museo Nacional Reina Sofía (1990-1994). Director of Visual Arts Department of Fundació “la Caixa” (1981-1991). She has been Secretary / Treasurer of CIMAM, (ICOM) and is now a Member of the International Arts Council, Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus; Advisory Board Museo Reina Sofia and Patron Member Thyssen-Bornemisza Foundation, Madrid, and Centro Guerrero, Granada. She has curated a large number of major exhibitions and monographs in Museums and Institutions around the world.

Emilio Pi Galvez-Cañero Lawyer and businessman in the communication sector, founder of the Colección Pi Fernandino together with his wife Helena. It was in 2000 that this collection, initiated ten years earlier, included more works in video format than in photographic or painting format, becoming thus mainly a video art collection. Emilio and his wife were also able to foresee the dissemination capacities of the digital works, betting on these formats as the future massive transmitters of the artistic creation.

Part of this collection has been shown at the Centro Nacional de Arte Reina Sofia, the Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, the Museo Vostell, the Museo Nacional de Brasilia and at several European and Asian capitals within the programme Vital International Video Art. In 2010, together with the Paul Getty collection (international category), it won the prize destined for private collections awarded by the ARCO fair.

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DEVELOPING AND MAINTAINING RELATIONSHIPS WITHIN THE ART SYSTEM: INSTITUTIONS, DEALERS, COLLECTORS AND THE COMMUNITY. How to approach each sector?

Moderator Ainhoa Grandes Massa SPEAKERS MarĂ­a de Corral y Emilio Pi. CONCEPTS transactions, contracts, certificates, insurances, installation instructions, follow up and taking care of collectors, customer loyalty, art fairs, the collector as a producer

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DEVELOPING AND MAINTAINING RELATIONSHIPS WITHIN THE ART SYSTEM: INSTITUTIONS, DEALERS, COLLECTORS AND THE COMMUNITY. How to approach each sector?

AINHOA GRANDES (A.G.).

Although the two guest speakers of this panel do not belong to the gallery business, they are in constant contact with the art world. In this regard we have been asked to give our particular point of view on the gallery scene today, as clients of art galleries.

The two invited guests are people with great experience: MarĂ­a de Corral, an art critic and independent curator with an extensive curricula on museums and institutions, including projects such as the Venice Biennale and other corporate collections. Emilio Pi, lawyer and business man in the communication sector, is a collector specialised in the audiovisual field. Regarding myself, I am head chief at the MACBA Foundation, a private institution founded 25 years ago with the objective to support the museum since its beginning and conformation of the permanent collection. As well, I have been over fourteen years on the task of art buyings in many international and Spanish galleries.

The transactions with galleries are a world still to discover. In order to prepare this panel I have called international and Spanish collectors for them to give me their point of view on the gallery world and their relation with it. Positive and negative experiences that we will share today. On the other hand, our idea is to be as pragmatic as possible and to provide a view from the other side. In no case we want to sound offensive or to be annoying giving tips and advice. What we really want is to give our opinion, also acknowledged by other colleagues who buy at galleries.

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The panel will be organised in two big bloqs: firstly starting with the transaction process, from the moment we arrive to the gallery and viceversa. Secondly the transaction itself, contracts, insurances and instructions for the artworks installations. And then the follow up question: how to foment customer/collector loyalty? Also we will look into the art fairs situation, and to conclude we will discuss about which is the future of galleries.

A.G. What are the galleries and their system in your opinion?

MarĂ­a de Corral (M.dC.) To my concern, galleries are a fundamental link in the art world. They are the ones responsible for promoting, supporting and advising the artists. Apart from mega galleries that do not care about the artists and their only interest is to get the most out of from their exhibitions, galleries are the ones that talk to the artist about prices, collectors to whom they sell and museums where they should exhibit. They are also who inform about young people.

Every collection I have been involved with has been arranged in collaboration with galleries, and there have been times where these have had to wait for six months or even one year in order to get paid. In many occasions the artwork was already sold and the gallerist had to convince the collector that had bought it to choose another one. In my case, the dialogue with galleries has been always very fluid and enormously productive. It must be said that I have never accepted impositions and that I do not work with those galleries that just try to sell me whatever.

As collections are very diverse, depending on the different museums and institutions, I have had to work with several galleries.

Emilio Pi (E.P.) From the private collectors point of view there is always a need to talk about a trajectory. The private collector’s first approach towards contemporary art usually takes place not directly in a gallery but in art fairs. There is where collectors get a first impression. Thereafter the relationship with the gallery begins, and that is a very important moment because it is when a bond of trust can be built with the collector or the art enthusiast. The next step is when that person visits the gallery. This is a crucial moment. Here is where this link or compromise must happen, which can or should continue in the future. From that moment on

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gallerists must be extremely careful to know how to attend, explain and maintain that spark a collector has when approaching art. In this very moment galleries enter and become part of the collector’s life, keeping and feeding a collection.

Moreover art galleries are key to serve as a source of knowledge apart from the Internet, auctions, biennials and museums. What art galleries do is to help collectors to get to know new artists, identifying what is of interest for each collection. It is then essential to maintain the relationship with art galleries, linked to the commitment of the gallerist with the artist and its programme.

A.G. How should gallerists address museums, corporative collectors, experts and independent collectors? How to filter adequately all the information we receive? What types of catalogues should the galleries send to the museums? Should the galleries encourage meetings between the collectors and the artists outside conventional networking moments such as openings?

M.dC. I have been buying and making collections for 35 years, and things have changed greatly. When I started, there were few galleries and I had a very fluid relationship with them; I met them all and they knew what I was interested in. Nowadays, with Internet and the need to save costs, nobody sends an invitation anymore. I prefer to receive an invitation card, so I created a special email account just to receive all these information, which I check once a month. However they never send you what you need, and they always tell you all the fairs they do instead. Galleries should check the way they send information to collectors, museums, curators and art critics, so those good professional relationships are built.

Some galleries are only interested to see if they sell something. Let me tell you something. If there is someone that has speculated in the art world, that is Charles Saatchi. As a result, I was able to buy artworks of Martin Rayman and Donald Judd for institutional collections, because suddenly Saatchi put part of his collection on sale. And galleries were there to buy or to ask to be in charge of the sales. Back in those days I asked Nicholas Logsdail from Lisson Gallery, how can you sell a second generation of artists from Saatchi after he resold all the sculptors’ pieces

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you use to be in charge of? His answer was that if he had not done it the artists would had left the gallery, because being with Saatchi means their names appear in the press, that they show in museums and kuntshalles, and therefore they would be more well known. It is something really difficult for the galleries, but it is reality: on one side there is the relation with collectors, and on the other the relation with artists demanding to be in certain places. There are also galleries that sell and later, in a short period, you can see those artworks in the market. At the same there are galleries whose artworks never reach the auctions. Why? Because they worry to sell to institutions and collectors committed with the construction of their own collections. “There is nothing to be afraid of, we have to try to live with it and make the difference.

There are collectors for Gagosian and collectors for the rest of art galleries. What you need to know very well is where we are, who should be addressed and when, etc., that is what is important�.

Today most of the galleries are in a very complex situation, in which is difficult to be sustainable. But it is like if we said the since Gagosian, Pace or Hauser&Wirth have appeared, other art galleries cannot exist. Does the existence of MoMA, Reina Sofia, the Tate Gallery and Pompidou take over the existence of other museums collecting other artists and doing other type of exhibitions? There is nothing to be afraid of, we have to try to live with it and make the difference. There are collectors for Gagosian and collectors for the rest of art galleries. What you need to know very well is where we are, who should be addressed and when, etc., that is what is important.

A.G. How can galleries improve communication? How to stipulate and control transactions of products such as video art?

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“The fact that moving image works can be reproduced it is a great opportunity for the artwork itself.

I am in favour of using Internet channels, and never again send artworks physically. There are multiple ways to do it: professional channels, download links or virtual repositories that can be accessed in a controlled manner. �

E.P. If communicating was all the problems a gallery had, everything could be solved. I think we should differentiate because you can not send the exact same email to the entire database. It is a simple thing that requires to make a minimum classification. From there on, what do you send?

Information on the exhibition and the artist obviously, but you could also provide further information that does not have to do necessarily with the activity of the gallery. If you know a collector or institution interested in video art it is well worth it to inform them about something else. It’s complicated because it is not convenient to talk about your competitors, but of what is happening in other areas.

The fact that moving image works can be reproduced it is a great opportunity for the artwork itself. I am in favour of using Internet channels, and never again send artworks physically. There are multiple ways to do it: professional channels, download links or virtual repositories that can be accessed in a controlled manner. Many are already doing it, as it empowers the parties involved to make informed decisions. There are lot of challenges, but at the same time it is one of the virtues of audiovisual artworks.

A.G. Some collectors have pointed out the importance of establishing a bond of trust with the gallerist, so they can be even offered artworks that do not belong to the same gallery. Young collectors complain that they are not appreciated by the galleries. And there is counseling: what to buy?

Is it the best moment to do it? What else is the artist doing? Where and how can somebody get more information about an specific artist?

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M.dC. These are difficult issues. There are many galleries that in their life-long experience have been also advisers, to the point where the gallerist will accompany the collector to other galleries to give him advice on what to buy. In any case, this situation is delicate considering that you never know in what extent the collector could feel offended.

From my experience, gallerists treat everyone the same if they feel there may be a purchase. The problem comes with some very impertinent questions, like when there is people who enter the gallery asking what artist they have to buy. Collectors, first of all, have to purchase what they like. Then, if they get advice on the importance of artists and works, better. It is a problem to make someone buy something; he will sell it soon after and will never come back to the gallery.

E.P. It is quite concerning that people entering a gallery for the first time have the feeling of being unattended. It has always been said that the gallery system is a non transparent system, only meant for high class. That could be a clichĂŠ, but not providing a welcoming answer scares away potential buyers.

A.G. I would like to propose various discussion points: -

Transactions. Is there enough transparency on the art sales? Are galleries straight with art prices? How do discounts work?

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Contracts: definition,accuracy and order. How can a more professional approach to contracts make the difference among galleries?

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Certificates and insurances. For how much should a reproducible artwork be insured?

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Installation instructions. Should they be delivered at the moment of the purchase to avoid any inconvenience when the product is received?

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Taxes, invoices, deductions. Who does it correspond to provide the exact information for transactions, the buyer or the seller?

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Facilities for purchasing. What should be the maximum waiting time for galleries?

E.P. I know very few sectors with so much flexibility for transactions as the

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art galleries sector; they allow you to pay within a year or two. A greater effort is impossible. From the formal point of view, we lack protocols and adequate formats for what is being purchased especially in the audiovisual world, both nationally and internationally. Protocols should not be complicated at all. They should precise the physical medium, explain what is specifically bought and sold, and provide a clear protocol on the exhibition conditions and rights. In this respect, the spectrum is very wide and it should be perfectly described. The buyer should be the one to claim for regularisation. It is not complicated and it should be standardised.

M.dC. For so many years and in so many parts, dirty money has been used in the art world. Therefore transparency is quite relative. In Spain is reasonable that the great majority of collections are not declared, as there are very high property taxes: the highest in Europe with 2% versus the 0,4% of other countries. To collect art is being punished in Spain, so there is actually no transparency, which is compounded due to the tax raise of 21% in comparison to the 7% of Germany or the 5.5% of France.

In regard to the value of artworks, differences can be found depending on the different infrastructures of the galleries. Some of them may manage different sites worldwide with dozens of employees; on the other hand, there are other galleries with only one space and few workers, which gives them the possibility of selling at a lower rate. Artists keep the same prices while galleries can give better discounts or engage with the collectors in other way. It depends on the structure of the gallery, thats why prices change so much nowadays.

Concerning art spaces, I worry about the relations with the White Cube.

You could go to Soho before and see artists making specific exhibitions for galleries according different spaces. It was really outstanding. Nowadays in Chelsea you do not know which gallery you have visited; the spaces and the way of setting up exhibitions are the same everywhere. For me this represents a quality loss.

A.G. And what about the installation instructions, specially in the audiovisual field?

TALKING GALLERIES

M.dC. It may happen that you purchase an art piece at an art fair exhibited in a 2x3 m. room, and by the moment you receive the instructions demand to install it in a 7x18 m. space. It can be very tricky because you are not being informed about the installation conditions until you receive the artwork. These are things that galleries should clarify in advance to collectors and institutions alike.

A.G. What do you expect from galleries once the transaction has been made?

Would you like to receive further information? Would you be interested in meeting the artist in person? Is the gallery the right channel to meet the artist? And regarding the possibility of changing an art piece, would you prefer galleries to be more flexible?

E.P. Concerning the follow up, I think it is something that the gallery should offer you, this is part of the acquired commitment. It is also a way to ensure a continued commitment between the gallery and the artist.

Therefore, to maintain communication is important, as it allows you to follow the artists’ processes.

With regard to getting to know the artists in person, in the first place, collectors are interested in the artwork. But it depends a lot on the artists as they are not passive beings. Galleries should organise these meetings in a bright manner. I find very important for these approaches to happen with the artists, but not in a systematic way.

A.G. And about the possibility of exchanging works of art, does it represent a problem for the gallery?

M.dC. It is a problem. I find it very complicated to exchange artworks, although there is no doubt galleries do it. While I was involved with certain institutions, I have always dreamed of having the chance to exchange certain artworks with living artists, trying to have a better representation of their works in those collections.

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A.G. Do you purchase at art fairs?

E.P. I make lots of purchases based on what I see at art fairs, but never make the actual transaction there.

M.dC. I nearly ever buy at art fairs, although I do it as a result. In my opinion art fairs are like the biennials, they are essential. Today there are fewer chances to travel and see exhibitions in museums, this is why fairs and biennials give you the possibility to see good works, to meet young artists and to keep yourself up to date, though they are so confusing with so much information. Nevertheless, the curated sections are important.

Today most of the big collectors make transactions at art fairs, at auction houses or at biennials. For instance, two years ago Fran莽ois Pinault got dressed with a cleaning service uniform to crash into the Basilea Art Fair meanwhile the galleries were still setting up their booths. He did it to be the first one to see and to buy.

CONTRIBUTIONS AND QUESTIONS (C/Q) FROM THE AUDIENCE

Q/C .

My name is Juana de Aizpuru. After 43 years in the trade we ensure to attend our clients, the collectors and the public the best we know and can. I would like to bring out something really important for galleries of which collectors, clients and institutions should be aware of: discounts. I think it is unappropiate to ask for a 25% discount, as galleries only take 40% most of the time. If we have to give 20% or 25% off, we lose money.

Juana Mord贸 said that expenses should take about 25%, leaving a 25% of revenue for the gallery and a 50% for the artist. In the 80s we used to have many contractual clients in the gallery. I helped building their collections and changing their point of view towards art. We would give them a 10% discount, but when they were first time visitors they would

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not even dare about asking for it. Now everyone wants a discount. Some galleries rely on that, they higher the prices so later they can lower them down. As a gallerist, I do not push up the price of the artist because I think is a foul play.

A.G. -When I started I did not understand that galleries could make a 25% discount, so my thought was that I was not paying correctly. There is a lack of transparency in all of this, on the galleries and the collectors side too. Due to the resource constraints, institutions always ask if it is possible to do something with a certain amount of money. If the gallerist denies, they try to search a bit more. But nothing is clear about discounts, you never know how far you can go.

E.P. Although this is a business, it makes me feel ashamed to try to understand why they do discounts. We are used to buying other goods were the way to reach the final price is very complex and difficult to understand, unless you are an expert. Here is much more simple: you pay a certain amount to the artist, there are several costs that depend on general expenses, and then there is the revenue.

M.dC. Artists complain many times because of the discounts art galleries make, as it affects them too.

Q. What type of information would you like to receive or which are the key points to purchase an artwork for a collection? Which information is in your opinion the most adequate?

M.dC. In general -and we are talking about reproducible works such as photography or video installations-, there is a lack of information from the very beginning, and later it could be almost impossible to exhibit them.

A.G. It sounds obvious, but numerous galleries do not send articles, features of the artworks, or information about the exhibitions. There is some

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kind of information that would be most useful when sending a dossier.

According the discourse of the collection, the more relevant information the better, as it will allow us to know better the artwork and the artists.

E.P. In regard to audiovisual artworks, there is usually a lack of information.

It is common that the exhibition format is not clear: TV monitor or screen projection, single-channel or installation, the type of material where it can be projected on, the setup dimensions, the projector brightness, etc., everything that has to do with the way an artist wants to exhibit the work. On the other hand, what happens with the conservation of serial works, specifically the audiovisual ones?

A.G. At the MACBA Foundation we are starting to produce pieces in collaboration with galleries. Emilio, you said before that you could be a producer because in this way you enter the dynamics of helping the gallery and the artist. It is one more issue to discuss in these difficult times (...)

E.P. It is always suitable with serial works, particularly with video art, where there are usually editions of 3,5,7,10. We would help the artist by not making him advance the money for the production of the piece. It could be a co production with many formulas: between the gallery and the collector, for instance, where the first two editions would go to the gallery or the artist, whilst the rest would continue its regular sale process.

M.dC. That is not only valid when purchasing. Institutions have always co produced when they are having an exhibition for an artist, by producing works in collaboration with the artist and the gallery. Thereafter, in a period of three years if the artwork is sold the institution would get the money back of the production; in other case, if the institution wants to keep the work, they would have a discount on what they invested.

Nowadays, I think the co financing processes that involve the collector or wider audiences, such as the crowdfunding, are interesting, but they are also frequent in the film industry and in other fields.

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Kamel Mennour Founder and director of the kamel mennour gallery in Paris, Mennour has been actively involved in the gallery sector for more than a decade. The kamel mennour gallery is organizing, supporting and producing exhibitions and outdoor projects by young contemporary artists like Camille Henrot, Latifa Echakhch, Mohamed Bourouissa, David Hominal or Alicja Kwade ; as well as by international artists such as Anish Kapoor, Lee Ufan, Gina Pane, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Tadashi Kawamata, Huang Yong Ping, Michel François, Ann Veronica Janssens, Daniel Buren, François Morellet and Claude Lévêque among others.

Georgina Adam Art Market Editor at large for The Art Newspaper since 2008 & Art Market correspondent for the Financial Times. Adam currently lectures subjects on emerging cultural centers, one of her main fields of interest, at the Sotheby’s Institute of Art and at Christie’s Institute. Adam has been writing about the art market and the arts in general for 25 years. She began her professional career in Paris, where she studied Islamic Art at the École du Louvre. After that she worked in London for The Antique Collector, The Daily Telegraph and other publications dealing with art sales.

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TAKING CARE OF OUR ARTISTS Practical issues on managing their careers

SPEAKERS Kamel Mennour in conversation with Georgina Adam CONCEPTS globalised world, artists overproduction, art fairs, passion and aversion, formalisation, support the artist, risks and commitments, food chain, agreements, co-production, collaboration

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Georgina Adam (G.A.) Kamel Mennour did not come from a background in art collecting. In fact, he sold editions door to door before opening a small gallery on Rue Mazarine in Paris 1999, followed in 2006 by a much bigger space on Rue Saint-AndrĂŠ des Arts. Just two months ago, he opened another, larger space in what used to be the Galerie Eric Franck. So, he has worked his way up from the bottom to the top in an extraordinary fashion.

He works with emerging artists of his generation but he also represents more established artists, for example Daniel Buren, who is very well known in France and abroad. This is a doubly triumphant year for Mennour, a gallerist is very close to his artists. He has proposed his artists on five occasions for the Marcel Duchamp Prize, the major prize for contemporary artists in France, and this year it was won by one of the artists he has been with for seven years, Latifa Echakhch. And, another of his artists, whom he has been following for eight years, Camille Henrot, won the Silver Lion at the Venice Biennale.

So Kamel, what is the most important thing in your relationship with your artists and in the way you work with them?

Kamel Mennour (K.M.) It is a 24-hours-a-day relationship day in, day out, and one that involves passion and aversion. It is like a tango. Galleries today are not like those of 40 or 50 years ago. Nowadays, galleries have to deal with the interference and intrusion of museums, propositions from museums and institutions. Even fairs organise walls of work that allow artists to appear in something that is a bit less obscene than the fair itself.

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“fairs are a necessary evil because they are a concentration of galleries and artists, and over a period of a two or three days they enable collectors to view a range of emerging galleries plus well-established galleries.

So collectors get a feel for the scene, what’s going on”.

As we all know, fairs are a necessary evil because they are a concentration of galleries and artists, and over a period of a two or three days they enable collectors to view a range of emerging galleries plus well-established galleries. So collectors get a feel for the scene, what’s going on.

G.A. You come from a mixed racial background and your wife is a different nationality, as she is German. Do you think this diverse background helps in your relationship with your artists?

K.M. I am French and I am of Algerian origin. My wife is German and speaks German at home with our children. I don’t speak German but I try to keep up. This mix of languages—German, French, Arabic with my mother and English when I am travelling and the fact that I can speak Spanish today—means I move in a globalised world and I am receptive to everyone’s discourse.

The Hong Kong Art Fair is an interesting example of how people see things differently. My belief is that there are so many fairs and so much competition between them that the Hong Kong fair should change.

That’s the viewpoint of gallerists and collectors in the West, but the Chinese don’t care about that at all because Hong Kong works for them.

The fact that Basel is big doesn’t register with them; for them it is Hong Kong.

G.A. How do you advise your artists when they come to you and ask whether they should do something or when you ask them for work to take to

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Basel Miami Beach, for example? There has been a lot of talk about overproduction and pressure put on artists. What is your position with your artists?

K.M. It is true that artists have a kind of aversion to fairs. One artist said that for an artist, entering a fair is like going into your parents’ bedroom and seeing them making love. It is obvious and it is special. At a fair, no matter how you try to install or hang works with a degree of poetry, there’s a kind of promiscuity. Even we gallerists try to exploit potential dialogue or a confrontation.

To answer your question, you have to decide which fairs can you go to and which not. There are so many fairs that it is better not to go at all than to go ill-prepared. There was a time when I was always chasing my tail, but now I do what I can and I know my limits. Three or four fairs a year is a lot because I have a serious programme that consists of producing eight monographic exhibitions a year, sometimes with an accompanying catalogue. It is a lot of work and if you want to set high standards and do it well, it takes its toll. You have to ask yourself are you going to go or not. Rather than simply taking a kind of display, I want to draw visitors’ attention to certain artists. Latifa Echakhch and Camille Henrot provide a focus around which I can present other artists.

“I will start to produce a project that seems madness on the basis of a handshake or perhaps a drawing on a restaurant tablecloth. I am sure that all my peers do exactly the same and I don’t understand gallerists who say they have contracts.”.

G.A. On a practical level, do you have contracts with your artists? Some galleries do, some don’t. Is it an informal arrangement? How does that work with your artists?

K.M. Gallerists of my generation, young galleries, don’t sign contracts with

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artists. Friends of mine in the music industry find it incredible that I will start to produce a project that seems madness on the basis of a handshake or perhaps a drawing on a restaurant tablecloth. I am sure that all my peers do exactly the same and I don’t understand gallerists who say they have contracts. In my case, I am familiar with this subject, as I have a Master’s Degree in Economics and I studied law. But I think it has to do with what I said earlier about passion and aversion, it is a kind of cohabitation, a tango.

“In the long term, you have to think about collateral, because there’s an enormous risk. You are so committed that it becomes difficult to protect your margin when dealing with collectors. You talk to the artist, the artist lowers their margin or you want them to but are afraid to say, so you lose money, you are constantly just scraping by”.

As soon as you start to talk about formalising things, when artists start to think about contracts, they begin thinking about Gagosian. They start to think about something that is very standard, no longer the kind of relationship where we go to fairs, we sleep in different rooms, but we get up and have breakfast together and we talk about the projects we envisage for this or that event, fair or museum. It is a very particular type of relationship. You really have to cultivate it.

In the long term, you have to think about collateral, because there’s an enormous risk. You are so committed that it becomes difficult to protect your margin when dealing with collectors. You talk to the artist, the artist lowers their margin or you want them to but are afraid to say, so you lose money, you are constantly just scraping by.

G.A. Do you discuss money with your artists? Is it something you talk about at the beginning or all the time? Is it something they’re receptive to or are they happy to leave it to you?

You can’t generalise. Artists each have their own way of doing things.

There is a relationship of trust and they tell you they’d like you to deal

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with it because it is almost ‘dirty’. There is a kind of like-mindedness, a sharing of strategy, positioning, money. Occasionally an artist needs money to buy an apartment or for some other reason. You are more like an interface; you are one of the people closest to the artist. I am talking about galleries where artists show their work for the first time, galleries that support the artist, deal with their ambition, their anxieties, emulation, rivalry, the fact that they are comparing themselves with artists you showed earlier and those you’ll be putting on later. You have to have a lot of understanding.

G.A. Do you fight with your artists?

K.M. Every day! I am just joking... But we have been married to the same woman for 23 years: we fight and we’ve got four children. With regard to the relationship between gallerists and artists, they call us when they want us to go with them to the museum; we are an essential part of the machinery. When it comes down to it, we are the ones who give the artists money. I am not the owner, I am the one who takes the real risks, I am the one making commitments.

“When you are a gallerist, you never do the same thing twice. You need to be available in order to respond and in fact you are often obliged to respond: if you are not working alongside the artist, he might go off to a large gallery. There is a kind of food chain in which the little fish is swallowed up by the big fish”.

In the music industry, everything is governed by contracts. In our business, an artist can leave, he can move on to where the grass is greener.

That has happened to me. We work in a business that is thrilling, but there are potential pitfalls.

We work hard to support our artists. As an example, one artist went to Fukushima and developed a project that he showed at the Pompidou

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Centre. I would say that we do half our work in the gallery and half outside in museums, events and fairs. When you are a gallerist, you never do the same thing twice. You need to be available in order to respond and in fact you are often obliged to respond: if you are not working alongside the artist, he might go off to a large gallery. There is a kind of food chain in which the little fish is swallowed up by the big fish.

G.A. There is the recent case of Oscar Murillo, who was with a very small gallery and is now with Zwirner, though I think he has stayed with the small gallery too. Are you frightened that when your artists do well, you could see them disappear?

K.M. I have had my own experiences of setbacks and of losing. Oscar Murillo moved from a small gallery to Zwirner and I have had my own Murillo, Adel Abdessemed. That’s part of the game and, without any false modesty, it is a plot against me but it is also a point in my favour. I was not big or powerful enough to hold on to him; I am not as good as I will be in ten years time, but I am better than I was ten years ago.

G.A. How did you feel when Adel left? You had one artist who left by mutual agreement, but in the case of Adel, you had made his career.

K.M. Yes, I was unwilling to accept his decision. But it is part of the experience.

I became bigger, stronger, happier. I was down for six months but it is in the past now.

G.A. What does a gallerist do if they no longer want to have an artist with them?

K.M. I will try to give you a kind of metaphor. It is like when the love between two people starts to fade. There is less ecstasy, less agreement, less passion, less communion. When it is the artist who is less interested, he makes fewer paintings, fewer works; and when it is the gallerist, he or she plays down the relevance of showing the artist’s work in group exhibitions

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or expresses less interest in the artist’s propositions. It is a situation that gradually slides, it is not sudden. We’re in a democratic world, we arrive at mutual agreements. You kiss in the morning, then you kiss less.

G.A. So, ideally, it is a sort of natural evolution.

K.M. I would say so.

CONTRIBUTIONS AND QUESTIONS (C/Q) FROM THE AUDIENCE Q. I am curious how you co-produce work in the framework of biennials or larger institutional exhibitions. I am also interested in collaboration with other galleries. Can you imagine or do you engage in other types of content-based collaboration with colleague galleries across the world or in France? “there’s a kind of race in fairs, where you try and take new work, but that is true of biennials too. You don’t do a copy and paste. You take recent work to every biennial”.

K.M. With regard to co-production and institutional biennials, they are a place where you support the artist. The artist is selected by the curator of the event and the curator makes it clear that in the case of a new production, it is the gallery that is behind it. And this is difficult, because there is a kind of race in fairs, where you try and take new work, but that is true of biennials too. You don’t do a copy and paste. You take recent work to every biennial.

And in answer to your second question, collaboration is vital, essential.

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In fact, we recently engaged in the Paris-Berlin Gallery Exchange, during which our artists went to a gallery in Berlin and vice versa. Five or six years ago, we organised a kind of platform at fairs with two other galleries in Berlin and Brussels. Collectors normally buy in particular galleries and this platform provided an opportunity to present artists in confrontation or in dialogue with others.

Q. In the slideshow you put on, there are very few paintings. I wonder if you could explain why and tell us about what people are looking for in a gallery, what kind of medium or work they are interested in?

K.M. In fact, in my case, I have very few painters among my artists, but I would like to show more because painting is the least bother. You visit an artist’s studio, you see the process, then later on you hang the work somewhere, though sometimes there is a hanging protocol. It is true I have very little painting, and I regard it as a failing on my part that I don’t have anything that is a new spark, something that opens your eyes, that shows you a new world and about which you can say “that is relevant, that is new”.

Q. Do you think you need to grow internationally in order to take your next step? Is growth size-wise inevitable?

K.M. There are many things I don’t know but there are certain things I do know. I have always been fascinated by worlds I know nothing of, but I would never contemplate having a gallery in London, New York or Zurich. I know my own limits. In character, I am more of a homebird, someone who runs a boutique. If you were to visit us, I would like you to visit our new space, which is very attractive. It is a space that enables artists to propose things. And it more than meets my needs. Expanding is an approach that suits other people, but I know my limits. I would not even open a gallery in Brussels, though I know a lot of other gallerists in Paris who have.

Q. I would like to ask about how you deal with great artists such as Anish Kapoor and Giacometti.

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K.M. It is a risky situation for both you and the artist. I will tell you a story.

While in New York for the fair, I went to visit the galleries in Chelsea and saw an exhibition of work by both Bacon and Giacometti at the Gagosian. My intention was to go on from there and see an exhibition of work by Philippe Parreno at the Guggenheim, but as I was going down in the lift, I said to myself that I had gained something from the exhibition and I would call Philippe another day. And I stopped to have a coffee.

By chance, two or three months later, the director of the Giacometti Foundation stopped by in my gallery. I didn’t know her. She said that she had liked what I had said, and when I asked her who she was, she told me that she had overheard me talking about the taste of that coffee and she wanted to have lunch with me. As we were eating, we began to envisage this exhibition, which on paper would not work because the artists are so different formally. Consequently, my job was to lead Buren, who detested Giacometti, to a kind of concept that would allow him to give his version of things. Giacometti marks the end of the École de Paris; the new generation of artists in Paris moved on because they realised in 1964 that Rauschenberg was showing the way. So my job as a gallerist was to tell Buren that he had the opportunity to curate the show himself, since Giacometti was dead, and it was what the Foundation was asking for. We started from the premise that the exhibition would cover just two years, the time in which Giacometti’s late period overlapped the advent of an artist who wanted to shatter everything. These two years provide a kind of guiding thread, they represent a kind of balancing act.

They provide us with a snapshot of a moment in which Paris ceased to exist.

Q. I saw an exhibition of work by Yona Friedman that I think you curated in Berlin. As most of us know, Friedman is a philosopher, architect and urban planner whose work has come to attention in the last ten years or so. I was wondering how you would support that work and make it commercially viable.

K.M. As you say, Friedman is an utopian architect who has theorised on the postulates of ‘spatiality’. He has a vision of what one might call megacities. We talk about megacities today, but he was theorising on this much earlier. He was a philosopher on this kind of vision, this kind of

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utopia, the outlook for the future, which to an extent has come to pass. It is a bit like my anecdote about the coffee. When you are a gallerist, you get shocks, you receive inputs, and I read his words. I am no intellectual, but I like to learn, to try to understand things better. Encountering Friedman was an absolute revelation for me. It was in 2006, just before the crisis in 2008. At that time, I spent two or three mornings a week listening to Yona talk to me about life, his dog, artists, politicians, all kinds of things. And I thought how lucky I was to have a guy like that talk to me and show me life. Someone commented earlier on art that makes you see differently, and that is what it was like. “as a gallery, in my experience, if you start to think on the basis of selling, it is over. You have to start listening to what the artist wants to convey, to invite them to be as demanding as possible”.

To answer your question more precisely, he gave me a certain prototype, a kind of maquette, which he had showed to documenta and a number galleries in the 1960s. We did four exhibitions with no expectation of selling. Moreover, the gallery that invited me to curate that exhibition knew they were not going to sell. Someone talked earlier about ‘transmission’. I think our job is also to convey: there’s an element of talking about content and there’s an element of talking about things that are not formalised, that are not tangible. There are some works that are easier. But as a gallery, in my experience, if you start to think on the basis of selling, it is over. You have to start listening to what the artist wants to convey, to invite them to be as demanding as possible. “a programme is structured over time. Maybe there are mistakes, but you need the time eventually to achieve your own satisfaction, to feel that it was rewarding”.

Obviously, you have to pay for the things you buy, you have to pay your staff, and you have to live as well. But a programme is structured over time. Maybe there are mistakes, but you need the time eventually

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to achieve your own satisfaction, to feel that it was rewarding, that I succeeded in doing something that made me feel that it enriched me, and not just me but my artists as well. For example, at the time of that exhibition, Camille Henrot had made a remarkable film that was a kind of introspection in her universe, her apartment, a universe that was absolutely unbelievable. There was nowhere even to put down a spoon.

It was full of models, books. She never throws anything out and she constantly makes spatial pieces out of cardboard, books and other items.

Her film was of an amazing environment of Yona Friedman. So, you enrich yourself and you enrich your artists.

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Jocelyn Wolff Founder and director of the Galerie Jocelyn Wolff in Paris. The gallery opened in October 2003 with a solo show by Clemens von Wedemeyer in a very small space in Belleville in East Paris. Most of represented artists had their first solo show at Galerie Jocelyn Wolff.

In March 2006, the gallery moved to a new space in the same neighbourhood, rue Julien-Lacroix.

In 2014, Wolff received the Federation of European Art Galleries Association (F.E.A.G.A.) Award for Creativity and New Inspiration.

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Carving out a space among the big brand galleries SPEAKER Jocelyn Wolff CONCEPTS gallery role, business models, art value, contracts, commercial vs. non-commercial, competition, collaboration, audience, artistic programme

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As a starting point I will introduce my gallery from a business perspective.

At the moment it does a turnover of â‚Ź1.8 million, making approximately 100 invoices a year and it is still considered as a non-profit business.

Because at the end of the year we have a profit of 5.000â‚Ź to 8.000â‚Ź, so it describes pretty much the world we are in. There are some galleries who have a smaller turnover but make more profit. I do not know about this big galleries business but, I suspect that many galleries are just the same.

To grow commercially does not mean that you generate profit.

The art market The art market is a completely reactionary place where the aesthetic values carried by the market are very old fashioned. The role of the gallery is also to change it, and not only from an abstract point of view.

In my experience, for instance, I represent and show a performance artist like Prinz Gholam, when there is nearly no market for performance art.

What you sell it is your score.

There are many practices that are not on the market or are really hard to commercialise, performance is one of them. Collections and institutions are starting to look at performance from the collection perspective, but I consider the market to be very complex to build. Although it is not against the market, we just need to change it, which is very different.

Performance art is also something that you do not see at art fairs.

Together with art fair people we have tried to integrate the performance with other business models, such as sculpture or painting, to create more

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entertainment in the show. But it does not work. The art fairs should pay the performance to give a cultural life to a commercial event, and not ask the galleries to do so. Furthermore, video art is something we never speak about. All the numbers and statistics give a very wrong vision of the art market as it only integrates a certain category of art works.

Another category of artistic production, which is not really present in the market, are the collaborative works. Sometimes the most fascinating things I see in museums are collaborative works done by several artists that are very hard to commercialise. This shows how the art market is still globally working with very strange ideological figures. For instance, the fact that most of the expensive artists are German also says a lot about the capacity of Germany to generate heroic figures, the artist as a hero and the artwork as a proof of delivering. It is something about power, something that is very dominant in the market.

“All the numbers and statistics give a very wrong vision of the art market as it only integrates a certain category of art works”.

A myth we have in the art market is the myth of ‘quality’. Dealers from all over the world always speak about ‘the quality’. It is about good taste and bad taste. I consider that the bad taste is the taste of the others.

Everyone finds quality on what they do and bad quality on the others.

When you look to a new important artwork it is always related to the size. Sometimes a very small Cézanne could be more relevant than a big painting acquired by the Qatari royal family. There are very specific characteristics of artworks which are successful on the market, but it is our responsibility as galleries when we interact with collectors not to play the game of this value. We can really promote art, which is difficult and demanding, without using these categories of importance.

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The role of the gallery I heard in a previous lecture that the gallery is like being a provider. The gallery is part of a very long chain, and for instance, if we analyse the process of a book in the publishing business; we find the author, which could be compared to the artist, the publisher, the agent, the literature agent, the publisher, the diffusion, the sales people and then the client. “Many galleries complain of not having enough visits, but for me it is a great thing, because if galleries are packed with tourists they will not function as art spaces�.

This whole chain is protected by a contract. In the gallery business we always speak about not having contracts, when we really do. It does not need to be written to be a contract. There is a business model that galleries use and then it could be broken like any other contract.

The line between the profit and non-profit world is totally artificial.

Numerous museums, Getty Museum to start with, are selling tickets.

Most of the big museums depend on politics, specially in Spain, and surely they are counting how many tickets or entries they have. On the other hand, the line between what is commercial and non-commercial, is easy to define. Many galleries complain of not having enough visits, but for me it is a great thing, because if galleries are packed with tourists they will not function as art spaces. In my case, I am glad to have just the amount of audience I can deal with, before having to think about selling tickets.

About the role of the galleries, it has been said to be really interesting the fact of turning symbolic capital to financial capital, but this would be a disaster. The work of the gallery is not to accumulate symbolic capital or to steal symbolic capital while working with curators or artists most of the time, but to turn it into power or influence.

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The real work of the gallery is to help the artist to find his position, in the context of the artistic production of our times. Even if the market is reluctance to certain productions, this is intrinsically the role of the gallery, to create a desire and to create an audience for the art. This idea of the audience is something that I am very interested in because in the last years we all hear about this big galleries opening a new space here and there, but you can see the parking lot in the Bourget is very much empty. “The real work of the gallery is to help the artist to find his position, in the context of the artistic production of our times.

Even if the market is reluctance to certain productions, this is intrinsically the role of the gallery, to create a desire and to create an audience for the art�.

Those are not galleries, those are very big showrooms. What defines a gallery is the interaction with the audience. I do not criticise them: if big galleries exist it is maybe a good thing. But we have to be careful because, for instance, Gagosian gallery does absolutely fantastic shows, specially when it is about historical artists. It is not that these mega galleries are not producing culture, sometimes they do and it has to be respected.

On the other hand, young galleries are not necessarily doing something interesting just because they are underground.

I am very sceptical about the hierarchies between the big mean galleries and the young innocent ones. The first ones use to be innocent once when they started, or at least many of them. Sometimes young galleries have great shows generated by very commercial galleries as well as very weak neo-conceptual shows done by potentially artist-oriented galleries.

So for me this categories are much more complex.

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Competition and collaboration in the gallery scene At the moment there is a tremendous competition due to an issue of quantity. Business models are so different than they use to be. The collector nowadays is not so different than the one 100 years ago, in contrast, the buyer nowadays is different. The environment has not changed as we think, it is a cliché, and we have to be very critical towards it. The scale changed, but it is quite natural, the scale of everything has changed. So, it means that we have a more open globalised art world which was already globalised before most of the industries. If we look at Matisse, whose main collectors where in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century, not in Paris, it shows how an international distribution of the avant-garde was already happening one hundred years ago.

The competition is different. As a mid-level gallery I have worked in many occasions with collaborators. For instance, a Villa project initiated by the Raster Gallery from Warsaw, in which many fellow galleries were invited to do a project in a very beautiful old Villa that was falling apart. It came out to be a non-profit festival in Warsaw with many galleries, like Zero Gallery from Milano. During the summer of 2008 we developed a “Chelsea Gallery District” in Reykjavík, with talks, screenings, performances, etc. We learned a lot from this experience.

Another experience took place in Tokyo, where we occupied a series of empty office spaces during one day together with two of the artists I work with, in order to do site specific projects.

“Art fairs are also a good exhibition space, as you are not condemned just to show works from a cynical and boring perspective. No one impedes the galleries to really play with this new medium, to deal with it and to be creative”.

Another collaborative model is the gallery exchange. A very classic formula that can be a wonderful way to penetrate a different reality and to learn from a colleague. Collaborations like the one I did with

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Labor gallery from Mexico, or with Silvia Dauder from ProjecteSD in Barcelona. But I did share my booth at many art fairs with different galleries and it is always very interesting to work with a colleague and to create a small exhibition in an art fair.

Art fairs are also a good exhibition space, as you are not condemned just to show works from a cynical and boring perspective. No one impedes the galleries to really play with this new medium, to deal with it and to be creative. Art fairs are the medium of the galleries and not of the artists. Sometimes is interesting to take position and to play a little bit with the works we know about. While at the gallery we depend much more on what the artist wants to do with the space. In this respect, it is not necessarily so interesting to accompany an artist who already knows what he wants to do.

Sharing artists it is also common since the modern promotion gallery merge in the 60s, but collaborations are also a way of associating energies and working together. Sometimes we see the gallery world as a mean competition but solidarity can also be found. There is a solidarity chain in the gallery business that maybe does not exist for the artists anymore.

From my experience I started ten years ago in a small space in Belleville, and I did not even know how an art collector looked like. Afterwards, I have acknowledged that I have been supported by many galleries who also started from scratch like me. When starting as a gallery now many people will give support if you are building your own programme.

It is also interesting to work in an environment that is not a bourgeois environment. I am very attached to the idea of the gallery as a space where people can go in and out; it is not a showroom; no one is rejected because of their knowledge. A gallery is about having a dialogue with the audience and it does not really exist elsewhere than in the Western world so far.

In Mexico they have wonderful galleries but, it is just not the same, they are not open to students, they do not have the same social practice around it. In my opinion there is no problem with the audience at the moment. There are lots of people who are going to galleries that really do a programme. But if you start to use your space to do a showroom, of course you will not have any audience.

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“The responsibility of the audience is very much responsibility of the gallery”.

There was a big article in Le Monde saying that art people, such as collectors, go to art fairs instead of galleries. I think they go more to galleries than they use to. The responsibility of the audience is very much responsibility of the gallery. Probably the mid-level galleries cannot afford a huge space to please the artist, but it is not about pleasing the artist but to have more works than the competitors. Instead, the mid-level galleries can provide an audience that these mega galleries cannot. The gallery can provide an audience, with an specific quality of mediation, which it could not be found in any museum or biennal.

KOW Gallery Berlin Project I co-founded a gallery in Berlin somehow as a protective shield to avoid seeing my most successful artists being stolen by other galleries, so it was my response to the success of some of my artists to build this project in partnership with some friends. The name of this gallery is KOW in Berlin.

At a certain point, a gallery needs to start operating professionally. It was important for my collectors to get the same service as they would get from a very wealthy and established gallery. To be able to do that you need to work with more established artists and with different generations.

I started to work with two older artists, Franz Erhard Walther, who is an artist that started developing his work in the late 50s and also more recently with William Anastasi, one of the very first conceptualists from New York whose work is not so known so far.

“The hardest thing to do for a gallery is the programme. It has to be completely dedicated to make it grow, to make it understandable to other people. If the programme is attractive it will bring audience”.

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There are lots of opportunities for young galleries to work with more established artists, who also need to have a more privileged relationship with a gallery that is not working with 20,000 other artists. There are plenty of possibilities for a gallery to really grow without only growing in size.

Galleries identity The hardest thing to do for a gallery is the programme. It has to be completely dedicated to make it grow, to make it understandable to other people. If the programme is attractive it will bring audience. From my perspective the art market is also an offer market, so if you really have interesting artists you will be able to find or develop a market for them.

The key element is the price, which is not much discussed, but is one way to compete with very giant businesses. It is about offering artists with a very strong background and career for less money, and then if the collectors prefer to buy less established artists for more money it is their problem.

Galleries business model I would really like to discuss about the weakest point of our ecosystem: the current business model of the artist-gallery relationship. At the moment artists and contemporary galleries share 50%/ 50% of a sale. On one hand, for many artists, especially since they gave up financing their production, it is pocket money and, on the other is financing a business or a promotion agency.

This business model does not work well, it is not certain if it will last, it was not like this all the time. In the 70s the galleries were not producing artworks as they do now, but the artists were constantly selling from the studio. So it was a different problem. In Paris there is one gallery, Louis CarrĂŠ that is the only one that is still working with a different business model. They buy the art at the studio, keep them in stock and sell them later. This is the previous business model used by the very first contemporary art galleries.

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This idea of the business model between the gallery and the artist could change. It has changed before, and it could change again. The most reactionary cases now in the contemporary art world are the big mogul artists who are not supporting a younger generation.

To conclude I would like to discuss the fact that most of the power in the art world is being concentrated by artists and not by galleries. At the moment, even the most important galleries are terrified about losing one, two or three of the artists who make 80% of their turnover.

In almost every gallery, their turnover comes from only a few artists.

So the galleries are extremely fragile, trying to compete, to diversify, and not work or either be the puppet of one or two artists. But that is a very difficult issue for galleries at whatever level they are. They are pressured by the artists, who are the ones that want to be dominant in the ecosystem of the galleries nowadays.

CONTRIBUTIONS AND QUESTIONS (C/Q) FROM THE AUDIENCE Q. I am a fan of your gallery, but I heard in your presentation a couple of contradictions that I would like you to clarify. About the business model based on a 50% - 50% between the gallery and the artist, you considered it was not sustainable. Then you said that there is a great solidarity among galleries and a great relationship between them. Why then did you have to open a gallery in Germany in order to defend yourself against someone poaching your artists? Are those relationships not so solidary anymore?

J.W. After a couple of years in the gallery system you cannot access the best art fairs, so what happens when you do your job correctly is that your artists will grow and will be visible to other big galleries, who will end up representing them. So you have a distortion in the competition that you have to deal with, but when you pass the first stage and have the same access to art fairs this problem does not exist anymore. At every level of the development of the gallery you have to face new challenges and you have to find a response. I thought that an artist in his seventies with experience and expertise in the segregated market was valuable and

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we needed it. Of course I lost some business but we can also control or develop the market of this artists more efficiently. Sometimes you have to organise competition with yourself just to avoid losing control.

Q. You also mentioned to be happy not having so many people going to your gallery. Isn’t that a contradiction to what you also said about how important it is that large audiences get access to art?

There is a difference, I cannot go to the Louvre anymore, because it is packed with tourists all the time, so I have the feeling that several cultural institutions have been confiscated by economic lobbies to sell hotel rooms, etc. So there are cultural institutions that do not function as cultural institutions anymore because you cannot interact with the art properly. So it is a question of balance, it is not black and white, it is grey.

To build an audience is one thing, to have a huge crowd is a problem.

Quality vs. quantity, for me it is perfectly coherent.

Q. Do you think the place where a gallery is -at least in Western countries- plays a role in its possible success in terms of interaction, growing, or developing? Is it the same opening a gallery in Brussels, Berlin, Paris, Barcelona or Madrid, right now?

J.W. It is not only about the place, you need also context, if the galleries are not challenged by very bright and daring institutions it is very difficult to do a programme. I do not think it is interesting if you are the only ones. We need to compete also artistically speaking with cultural institutions or what we call non-profit cultural institutions. We, the galleries, benefit from this environment. And if it is only a commercial environment it is more difficult to have interesting shows. Nevertheless, there are certain differences. I do not like the big galleries in London as much, the exhibitions in Berlin are much more interesting. Yet this is a contradiction because the context, in terms of institutions, it is much stronger in London, but maybe is too early to grow the audience galleries need. Brussels, on the other hand, is much more bourgeois and less interesting than Berlin or Paris. At the moment there are not so many galleries that run a very experimental programme, but this might change.

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Q. Regarding the expense of attending art fairs for galleries, is there anything that art fairs could do to become more gallery oriented and really make you feel like you gain value from the cost of participation?

J.W. I think it is a very good point because art fairs, at first creations of galleries, have the capacity to either promote content oriented galleries that really do an effort in terms of making an exhibition at the fair or they can hide them next to the toilets at the very end of the hall. So there is a power, there is a real possibility for art fairs to play and push you to one side or the other. I do not understand the reasons behind it but I think that is something that could determine a lot of your success or loss at a fair.

Q. When you talked about the collaboration with younger galleries and how you have been nurtured by other galleries, can you elaborate on that? How does it work for you?

J.W. It is also related with the art fairs, but there are several examples.

Suddenly you have a collector that comes to your place, and one year after you hear that he was told about your gallery by another one. It happened to me several times. Or even colleagues coming with a collector to your space. Suddenly you are in a big prestigious art fair where you did not know anyone but people know you. I have been working in the FIAC committee and you have certain power while you are in the committee, whether to support or not galleries. Almost all the art fairs do it. Maybe you can get advice from more established galleries, like I did while working with Gallery N채chst St.Stephan in Vienna. When you start in a business you need to get good advice. What to do, how to introduce yourself in an art fair, how to deal with it (...) All of this you can get from colleagues if they feel you are doing something interesting for the audience. It sounds very idealistic but at least it is my experience.

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Clare McAndrew Dr. McAndrew is a cultural economist, investment analyst and published author. She founded Arts Economics in 2005, a research and consulting firm focused exclusively on the art economy. Clare completed her PhD in Economics at Trinity College Dublin in 2001, where she also lectured and taught Economics for four years.

She then directed a number of research projects for the Arts Council England on the effects of regulation, taxation and other issues in the visual arts market. In 2002, Clare joined as chief economist the US firm Kusin & Company, a boutique investment banking firm specializing in art investment. After three years in the US, Clare returned to Europe in 2005 and continued her work in the art market in private research and consulting capacity for a global client base. Clare has published widely on the economics of the art market, including her book entitled Fine Art and High Finance (Bloomberg Press, 2010). She also publishes an annual macroeconomic report on the global art market for The European Fine Art Foundation (TEFAF).

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Tomorrow’s art market: where will it be?

Present and future perspectives

SPEAKER Clare McAndrew CONCEPTS economic growth, wealth dynamics, art market, networth individuals, market polarisation, “flight to safety” strategy, dealers, auction houses, Internet, e-commerce, sales, business models

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Present and future perspectives

The last years in the art market have seen more changes in the infrastructure and the pattern of trade than in a hundred years. We have been through some major repressions and recoveries during that period. And we have probably ended up in a different trading ground for dealers than back in the 80s. The market definitely does not move as fast as financial or other markets. At the same time it is quite an unpredictable place, where it is difficult to forecast given that people from my background have been notoriously bad in forecasting anything.

To begin with, we will take a look into the macro-view on the whole situation, going through the key aspects of the global art market context from 1990 to 2013. Analysing also the big trend and how the market shifted with special focus on the contemporary art sector and the polarisation. The last part of the lecture will be focused on business models of dealers and how the trends affected them. This observation is based on the research done always as an outsider. On the other hand, I also wanted to highlight the changing structure of the art trade and its impact on dealers.

Global art market context 1990-2013 In the last years, the growth and distribution of the market as a whole is differently divided than in the economic market. In Spain, it has been a rough ride for the market in general, which filtered down to the art market, where everyone is cautious of buying and selling to a certain degree in some sectors. The pattern reveals that it hit a low point in 2009 and recovered well in 2010 and 2011, driven mainly by fine art and antiques, as well as the raise in China in those two years. But the next

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year the Chinese market slowed down considerably, which consequently dragged down again.

On the other hand, in the global sales from 1990 to 2012, it reveals that there has been a phenomenal growth, which has changed the market enormously. With 27 million Dollar at that time it was the highest point ever reached. But then the market was ruined by the Japanese, as the market was totally wiped out and lost nearly 70 percent of its value and reached the historical low point of over 10 billion Dollar.

Most remarkable is the speed of percussion and recovery then versus now. In the 90s it took the market about 15 years to recover by slowly stabilising again. But it did not reach the same level as in 2004/ 2005, where only within a couple of months the market entered a whole new sales level.

There are various reasons for this, one are the changes in the global nature of the market, when the Japanese left the market and virtually disappeared. Whereas new buyers from China and other parts of the world have had a more sustained impact on the market. Another reason is the high end buyers did not disappeared when the market went down at the end of 2009.

However, it is broadly known that it is an over-supplied market, where it depends on what is sold and what people want to sell at particular auctions. It was rather not perceived as a very good time, when the art world was turning upside down due to redundancies and bankruptcies.

There were not many safe places for cash deposits, but the art world was considered to be a safe place to invest, rather than the bank or stock market. Therefore, this perception helped the art market to come back quite strongly.

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Changing art market geography Concerning the trends, one of the big shifts took place in terms of geography of the art market. It was clearly revealing the dominance of the US market by 2004, which was about half the value of sales in regard of auction and dealer sales in the US. Adding the UK, they had around three quarter of the market, which is a familiar situation from the 60s.

In 2012 it clearly showed that the impact of new markets, such as China was immense, resulting in a jump back of the US market. The crucial point of the development is the change on the way the market looks in London and New York.

The massive growth of the Chinese Auction Sales of the market reached about 350% between 2004 and 2012, followed by a stabled year with not high losses. The development in China equals a “bubble“, this is when prices rise higher than explainable by fundamental values, which is called rational exuberance. In such periods people feel a rational upbeat and are simply buying assets through the believe of being able to sell them at a higher price, less than the consideration of the actual value. This was exactly what was considered the case of the Chinese contemporary market and the market as a whole to a certain degree, where a bubblelike behaviour was observed.

In 2008 there were Western speculators buying Chinese contemporary art thinking they could sell it back to Chinese buyers, when they would become wealthy. The danger of such speculations is the emergence of a catalytic event out of it, which create a rushful liquidity. Thus, in a bubble-like atmosphere the threat lies in a growing unclear notion of the real value.

Further the boom in China, was much more supply driven than by demand, because there was a huge offer of sellable products. In alignment with the observation above, the volume of the works sold went down in 2012. One of the aspects is the enormous amount of buy-ins in the Chinese market, that expanded from about a third in 2004 to over half of the market in 2011. Along with this, apparently many people presumed the market of being the victim of its own success. Many wanted to sell for high prices, but due to low quality or fakes it did not sell out. Therefore a lower volume of high quality works is considered to be more resistant towards problems, leading to a more stable growth over time.

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Above that, there were definite good reasons why the market slowed again. Next to gone speculators, the government was looking closer at the market in terms of taxation and other practices. The whole economic situation in China slowed due to several fiscal and monetary constraints on liquidity. However the fundamentalists, for the long term, are very strong, along with positive wealth dynamics. The number of affluent households is increasing year by year.

Wealth dynamics and the art market The wealth dynamics feed into the market. Over half the population of Higher Networth Individuals live in the four bigger art markets.

The main art buyers are supposedly these stereotypical high networth individuals that have been growing considerably over the last 10 years from 7 million to 12 million now world wide. They have obviously increased their geographical spread, but it is important to observe places like Japan and Germany, where we see that having rich people does not make an art market either.

Taking into account the wealth percentage among the whole population, it gets clear that brick regions have been hit less severely and are recovering faster. Although they were buying art rapidly,

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still the art buying is driven by a small portion of the population.

Another reason is that the middle class is increasing rapidly, disregarding the US. The development from growth in GDP per capita from 2002 to 2012 reveals that it is mostly a growth of over 200%, resulting in an average growth rate in incomes. But yet, the average person in China cannot afford to buy art. With a growth of over 400% in the last years, it can be considered a positive sign for the future market development.

Investment of passion 2013 Researchers have generally shown that high networth individuals allocate up to 10% of their investable spending on investment of passion like art, collectables, sport teams, etc. In countries with a high inflation there is a high tendency of investments in these assets. The average invested in the Emirates has been 18%, in China 17%, in Brazil 15%, while in more mature markets like US and UK it has been only about 7 or 8%, which is still a generous estimate.

In the first quarter of 2013, jewelry and gems were the most popular; luxury collectibles, which are antiques and coins, made up the second place, followed by art. A share of 17% at that time was high, but in times of crisis the share delegated to art tends to go up. If we observe in 2009 the allocation accounted for up to 25%, this is related to the notion to invest in long-term tangible value. Therefore, high networth individuals perceive luxury purchases with a higher financial sense.

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To conclude about wealth and emerging markets, we can say that these have been important to the art market in terms of buying, especially in China regarding the sales. They have been highlighted to do our own economical difficult period in the last few years. In this sense it is important to qualify the significance of wealthy populations or a lot of monetary resources in a country, although they do not determine a market by their own. Considering China, Russia or Brazil, most billionaires may buy some local art, but they are mainly purchasing in London or New York. They have all the infrastructure that goes with the market in terms of the institutions, expertise and all ancillary services, elements that are currently under pressure in places like China. But specialists ensure that packing, shipping and other structures required are available. The fact why New York will always be up there, is because it has a really transparent regulated system that allows a healthy trade. Due to this nutshell, New York is consistently stable. Also as the consumers are protected by a very strong buyer commercial code. Sellers are likewise protected, but not in the same hampering way as common in Europe.

Their works come in to the market and slow it down, by doing it offbook, where the government is not getting any revenue from it. In New York it is so open, that there is supposingly no reason to lie.

It was good for the market to be tied to what happened economically.

People were buying more bonds or more of blue-chip stocks. The same happened over the last years in the art market. Well-established brandname artists were the ones with the big ticket items.

Post-war and Contemporary More significantly, is the importance of post-war and contemporary sales standing out among all other sales. They characterise the leading sector with over 40% of sales worldwide. Together with modern art it accounts about 70% of sales. This is vastly different from the 1980s, when it was a tiny highrisk area with only a few dealers and cutting edge collectors. It changed completely as nowadays it is considered the most low risk sector to invest in, but as well the most speculative one.

However, the fine art sector is acceptable in comparison to the global financial crisis, as it only had an extreme low point and came back extremely strong with the highest ever recorded level for auction sales in 2012.

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The contemporary art sector is outperforming other sectors and financial industries as well. Obviously these industries are quite limited as revealed by an index from ARTNET, data focusing on their top 50

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artists. A limitation in all these sales can be seen, in fact only successful sales are considered and buy-ins of those favoured artists are not even registered in this index. So, it is not a risk-adjusted index at all.

Besides that, it is only auction data, because there is no other microlevel data available. Fundamentally, the problem does not lie within the indices themselves. The problem is caused by the fact that all financial and economic models are built on the basis of a number of set assumptions.

If those assumptions are then used without the required knowledge, the interpretation of indices is flawed. It is the matter with all metrics in the art market, where misinterpretations are done and it is presumed that they substitute qualitative analysis, subjective feedback and judgement.

These can only be used in a supplemented way.

According to conversations to collectors in New York, it is considered that high-buyers only want to buy huge sums for artist, where there is a guarantee that they will be valuable in the next 50 to 100 years. Therefore the indices of popular artists such as Damien Hirst, Roy Lichtenstein or Andy Warhol are lower over time in contrary to Jean-Michel Basquiat or Mark Rothko.

Despite those side value sales, for most of dealers and auction houses the sales do not take place at this high-end. Most of the sales in the art market happen at a far lower level. Therefore, it is a polarised market, where the value is at the high-end, but the majority of transactions happen at a lower level.

Sectors and polarisation In the dealer sector 77% of transactions are done for less than 50.000â‚Ź.

The same is happening in the auction sector, where 93% of all lots, which are even more skewed, are less than 50.000â‚Ź. Over half the value of the market comes from 1% of sales and at the same time artists, connected to superstar mentality in the art market.

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Therefore, auction houses were highly successful in getting part of a narrow list of names. Moreover, they were truly successful in selling those names. Thus, it is a challenge for dealers to select what the market might be interested in. At this point, from talking to some dealers from the US and Europe, I have understood why they cannot access the narrowed list of artists all the time. They are reengaged to also look at higher risk areas. Same is valid for high-end dealers to consider areas that have been perceived more risky in the last two years. At the end, it can be seen as a positive development away from everyone buying the most wanted and popular artists.

Lastly, the focus lies on the change in a competitive business used by dealers, which is based on general research done for CINOA (Confédération Internationale des Négociants en Oeuvres d’Art) in 2011 about dealers of older works and not purely contemporary artworks. It fitted the model of dealer behaviour in the 1960s and 1970s, where the premises where “buy cheap, sell dear“, there was no difference between antique or contemporary dealers. They were in general opportunistic and clever business people who very successfully created important collections in that period. From the 70s to the 90s, the models fundamentally changed concerning supply and demand, as did the balance of power in the art market. Starting with auction houses, with whom dealers started to

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compete with directly, both for buyers and particular for suppliers. As a consequence, quality work started to dwindle and partly even difficult to access.

In the current period the basic premises of most businesses are based on finding and accessing product, where buying is done on a case to case basis. So a lot of competitive strategies have been shifted to new access, adding services.

Along with these changes in the approach to businesses, the degree of specialisation in the market has changed. There were indications that dealer specialisation is increasing over time. In more mature markets as well as in larger art markets there are greater specialisations. It can be seen from a TEFAF study, when looking at smaller cities in the midwest of the US. Whereas in New York the range of the dealers are cut by sector, price, etc. Although the sector became more specialised, it was assumed to be more rewarding financially for the dealer’s career.

Profound expertise, sources, buyers and particular knowledge in one area, are obviously worth capitalising on.

It is interesting what will happen in the future, it appears like a growing specialisation, but would worry that given to the shortage of supply in some sectors, due to a narrow list of artists, where everyone is buying the same. It is going to be challenging for people to specialise even more. So probably the ideal reaction would be to segment the market, looking for areas that are underserved in terms of value.

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Changing dealers business models A further big trend in the market is the big change of dealer channels, where the importance of fairs and online channels has grown. Along with this a decline in retail gallery is noticeable in the 798 district of Chelsea, New York. How galleries that have been once young and cutting-edge galleries move out? Which is actually related with high rents. They were pushed out because of competition, as it is just connected with the search for lower cost locations.

Another reason for the decline is lower foot traffic, especially in the older sectors, less in contemporary art galleries. This goes along with the general trend of people’s raising preference to buy online and being more attracted and driven by events such as fairs. Therefore buyers loyalties have shifted more to the fair then to galleries, which is a huge problem dealers are facing.

Due to the growth in the online medium, galleries even start to down size in terms of manpower and space. Furthermore, auction houses increasingly act as retailers and host an increasing number of private sales. Art consultants that also work with dealers, tend to complete transactions themselves by cutting out tasks usually pursued by galleries.

At last, the artists focus themselves more on the market and are becoming more a market force by their own.

Fairs are central now, however there has been a slight anti-fair backlash from dealers in the US, as there is no real need for them to travel to Hong Kong in order to sell the works to American buyers. In consequence, dealer associations are working on making their own national fairs the best. The already recognisable trends of growing regionalisation will continue and different fairs will focus on different subjects.

The online market As already shortly mentioned, the significance of the online art market is constantly growing. I think some of it is justified as it is overstated as well. According to some estimates, the market was estimated for 3 billion Dollars, which are about 6% of the global sales, including auction, collectible and dealer sales. The online channel moreover became a huge advantage for dealers in terms of integral communication and marketing.

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On top of that, although dealers achieved exceptionally advanced platforms, auctions houses are still way ahead as e-commerce in the dealer sectors just remain very low. For this matter, I asked dealers and collectors for the reasons of this situation and the responses were that the market is too subjective, which works against anonymous impersonal online sales, where advice and the physical component are missing. Plus without advice it is difficult to work through the offers intelligently.

Also values are partly too high for the e-commerce to work effectively, therefore it might work better for lower values sales. Online sales are besides more suited to high inventory businesses, where you can have high inventory in a low cost location and sell it at any place. Whereas dealers are working with really small up to no inventory. Another problem is related to guarantees that cannot be given easily online regarding quality, size, conditions and discretion.

In the gallery market there is mostly primary market sales with photography and prints, which are more mixed in the auction sector. For Sotheby’s the online component is familiar, as they had a collaboration with Amazon in the late 90s. In general online auctions are highly pursued by Sotheby’s and Christie’s, who’s online offering has just been relaunched in 2013. A gradually move up of the value chain can be observed. For instance, Heritage Auctions in Dallas, are a huge online seller, with over 500.000 visitors a month. Art, collectibles, coins are sold at an enormous level.

Smaller companies mostly do not have the budget to do their own online version, so they are using companies like Paddle8, ArtFact, ARTNET auctions to offer their works online. Some of them have great business models, as for example Paddle8, when a sale closes they immediately send offers to every single underbidder with similar objects.

Companies such as Artspace, Paddle8 and 1stdibs are important for established dealers, and in the older sector it is Artspace and Artsy. But also companies like Amazon or eBay started looking into the high-end, so there is the possibility of them launching something in the near future.

Artists themselves increasingly use the online channel to sell works on their webpage. More importantly, they become their own marketing powerhouses by exposing any relevant information to social media.

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media attention created by themselves. Consequently, the market is getting more democratic and the role of the dealer as a gatekeeper seems to be diminishing.

Nevertheless, the whole development and the advantage behind the online channel need to be seen in context, in order to not overstate them.

It has to be seen skeptically, as it is rather unrealistic that the gallery and dealer practices will function in a purely online matter. Even at the collectors side, where direct sales are the core practice a complete takeover is rather unimaginable. Thus, the growth in e-retail cannot be ignored in the art market, because it is increasing five times faster than any other retail markets. Surely, it will always have its hesitation with the physical market, but as long as it is demanded, only transactions need to be brought more into focus.

Dealers and auction houses What is happening with dealers and auction houses it has been a key competitive challenge for the dealers recently. The balance of power shifted in the 1980s and 90s. Before those years collectors approached the dealer with the order to acquire a certain work at an auction. While people nowadays, are willing and keen on buying themselves online or physically at auctions.

It was believed that the auction houses are in the money business. This probably triggered their effectiveness in giving guarantees, with the appearance as impersonal incorporate bodies. They are non-specialised, diversified and have very high marketing budgets to push anything.

Thus, their focus was considered to be less on service than on sales, which is opposed to dealers. They are highly specialised experts with small businesses and high focus on those services.

But these stylised perception and the connected definitions, at least for the auctions houses, became more blurred. Next to the private sales, it gets obvious in the way those who run the auctions houses do not perceive themselves in the auction business anymore.

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The dealer competitive advantages and disadvantages Despite the power the auction has gained, dealers still have competitive advantages, such as recourse, expertise, better access and quality, added value, longevity and low stress. Besides all the positive aspects, the dealers find that their own top disadvantages are, firstly prices and markups, because there is the perception that you get a bargain at auction that cannot take place elsewhere. Even though contacts were seen as one of the main advantages, it is also perceived as a disadvantage. This came along with the notion that collectors felt too pressured by dealers to buy.

Beyond that, collectors are aware of dealers tending to have a hierarchy of clients, which means different type of relationships. The last point was the lack of transparency in terms of prices.

The final topic was forecasting the future by taking into account all observed trends and issues. In summary it was said, that there will be a massive increase in the size of sales in respect of volume and value.

Supply and demand were predicted to get globalised. Macro downside risk will decrease, while micro competition will grow. The market will continuously be dominated by the so called “flight-to-safety“ strategy and polarisation. Finally, the infrastructure of the art trade while experience an immense change, where it is expected to happen faster in the auction than in the dealer sector.

CONTRIBUTIONS AND QUESTIONS (C/Q) FROM THE AUDIENCE

Q. In the figures you showed Africa was not included. Therefore the question is if you consider the evolution of the continent is worth to look at?

C.M. Yes, I definitely think so. I have some African galleries in my current survey now as well, mostly South African but also other countries.

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I suppose the auction sector there is very small. On the other hand, I would consider it is the same at all the emerging countries, where much is reported in the media, but when you take a closer look to the value and volume of sales it is comparatively low, such as the price point. Along with this, those developments are normally not mirrored in macro studies as they feature less than 1% of the overall sales figure. However, I still believe that Africa is one of those regions with a huge potential to evolve over time.

Q. As you basically become the market standard for those information and data I have a few questions: The mentioned figure of 3 billion Dollar for online sales, seems really substantial. So I would like you tell where is deriving from and how it is calculated? And also, how did you collect data in the Chinese market?

C.M. This figure is from sales including collectibles and coins. In general, my definition of the market is quite broad, therefore I based it on what auction houses have been reporting in surveys saying how much they were selling online. For the dealer sector, it was based on self-reporting from the dealers surveys, what could have made the figure bigger than it was. This year I asked them explicitly to name how much they have sold online. Here, I put emphasis on what was specifically e-commerce directly via the web page without much physical presence.

The auction data in China I get through the collaboration with a US and a Chinese company, in order to get a balanced figure. With the gallery sector in China it is very problematic. During the last two years the response rate to surveys were very low. In opposite to Europeans and Americans, they totally distrust the online way, they rather give you the figures in person and know with whom they are dealing with. There are not that many galleries, so you need to make assumptions on their turnover based on talks with experts in the market. You still have to make a few leaks, but it is based on the most robust research possible.

Q. Could you provide a detailed breakdown of the parameters of your surveys, such as number of participants, number of responses, the geographical coverage, etc.? I tried to find it but without success.

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C.M. Sure, it is available for anyone who wants it. I used to publish some methodological appendices in the TEFAF report itself, but they did not see it as interesting content for the readers, so in the end it was not included. In general, I am very open about my methodology. At the moment that number of people I survey is around 7.500, with sometimes a response rate of up to 50% in some countries, especially smaller countries where the participants are very engaged. While in some bigger countries like China in the last year, was only about 3%. It is a stratified survey, not a random sample. Out of this you do have to take a leap and make estimates, because at first you have a normal distribution of what the picture should like for the entire population of dealers in the country, the sector and the region. Then you have to make estimation out of good represented middle part of dealers, as it is common that at the high-end and the low-end the rates are lower.

Q. When we are looking at Asia, can you say in which city most of the businesses are conducted? There has been an extended discussion if it is Hong Kong, Beijing or Singapore, and the turnover of 3% you showed seems really low.

C.M. If you look at the art market as a whole, Beijing has the higher rate of sales, although it used to be Hong Kong. We also kept an eye on Singapore, because they seemed to be interesting, but the values based on the results I get there and certainly the visible auction results, are not a real big market. It is the same with India and Russia, China and the Emirates according to study done for TEFAF. The actual amount of sales taking place there was surprisingly low. There are important gallery networks, but the price points are low and thus the entire turnover of them put together is not necessarily so high.

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Sylvain Levy Contemporary Chinese art collector and visiting professor at the Shanghai University in charge of the Art and Management Master. The Dslcollection, founded by Sylvain and Dominique Levy, is an art collection that embraces the discovery, study and promotion of the Chinese contemporary artistic and cultural production, be it paintings, sculpture, video art, installations or new media art.

The key factors that differentiate the Dslcollection are its unique acquisition policy and its use of the latest technology. Through technology, the collection is able to achieve greater visibility, upon which to build a strong personality of its own. The ultimate goal is to create a sustainable identity for the collection within the international art world, which is truly distinctive and not tied to its founding members.

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The Chinese art market LOOKING BEHIND THE NUMBERS FROM THE SPECTRUM OF A DAY TO DAY EXPERIENCE

SPEAKER Sylvain Levy CONCEPTS Chinese art market, ecosystem, uniqueness, development, galleries, collectors, Chinese art scene, do’s and don’ts, secondary art market, East and West

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It is a challenge to tackle this topic, as Western audiences may only have a connection with it through symbols, numbers and bubbles. But there is something else in China. Art in America pointed out how in 2013 Venice Biennale there was 350 Chinese artists represented, compared to only 150 artists from 38 countries in Massimiliano Gioni’s keynote show “The Encyclopedic Palace” in The Central Pavilion and The Arsenale.

The very first time for China to be part in the Biennale was in 2005, so imagine what happened between 2005 and 2013.

What it’s interesting is that art is one mirror of society, but in the case of China it is even more than that: art is in the society. You cannot understand China without understanding the society. The more I go to China, the more I know one thing: I do not know China. China is another culture. China is another world. Therefore, what I am going to tell you today is just my point of view.

What happens in the Chinese market?

Behind the art market there is a nit coloured eco-system, a very complicated ecosystem, especially when speaking of an emergent country. As I cannot make a full course on China in 40 minutes, I have chosen certain subjects on which I will give key ideas about what is happening as a menu dégustation.

To begin with the artists, who are the kings of the art scene, there is a very interesting interview with Xu Bing, who is the Art Director of CAFA, the most important Fine Art Academy in China. Bing first spoke

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about the relation between the Western people and the Chinese. Before the 1980s, Beijing was a place of artistic ferment, greatly influenced by the Western culture, primarily through books. After 1985 the Chinese artists, wanted to emancipate themselves, wherefore they used the West.

What is very interesting about this culture, is the pragmatism in the Chinese people, as in China there can be Buddhists and terrorists, but in the end the result matters. Therefore, by the year 2000 they already wanted to cut the Western culture. In terms of culture there is a kind of “hate and love” between China and the West.

Xu Bing’s greatest reward of his Western experience in the United States was the feeling of becoming more sensitive to Chinese culture. It is crucial to understand that Chinese people are deeply Chinese.

Bing expressed with the vehemence of someone whom life has taught that the fruits of talent, inspiration, hard work and success can all vanish in an instant, that: “You can’t make plans“ and thus “what happens next is up to fate”. Even Chinese artists do not have a long-term view, because they never know what is going to happen.

Another example for this is Ai Weiwei, who is a very symbolic case, due to the fact that Ai Weiwei is considered as the most important activist.

Moreover his case is all about censorship, but nevertheless it is more than that. He was put in jail, because at the time the government feared that the Middle East revolution called “Jasmine” will come to China. Due to this, he was very dangerous for them, which made them imprisoning him. Therefore it was a result of the fear of Ai Weiwei’s influence rather than censorship, so the real explanation lays in the Chinese domestic politics.

It became obvious that not even the Western pressure could free him, not even when he was appointed winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. Ai Weiwei was purely part of the famous battle between bourgeoisie and the government. Consequently, this is an example of how culture politics in China intervene in arts.

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The West and the East A famous artwork by Zeng Fanzhi’s, the “Last Supper”, has been an Asian record sold for 24.7 Dollar, an art piece that shows a relation between the West and the East. The reactions upon this record it was more important than we would think. This event was seen differently at different parts of the world. In China this record caused a lot of discussion. Some of my Chinese friends have said: “It does not concern Zeng Fanzhi. It is only a game among the Western people”. In other words, these records do not have anything to do with the Chinese people.

This was supported by the People’s Daily stating that this record was only possible due to his international exhibitions. This goes along with the urge of Chinese artists to be recognised outside of China, although they search for non-Chinese galleries.

Two characteristics of the Chinese art market are that the art system in China is not established and, that many of the selected works by the collector are only collected because they know the artist. The friendship and networking in China are crucial. On the other hand, people do not believe the museum to make up their mind about the validity of an artists. They believe in the market.

The Galleries Gallery means space and space is something big, but in China there are numerous very small galleries. As for instance, Vitamin Gonjo, which is part of t he Art Basel, FIAC and Frieze. What it means is that quality in China does not depend on a big space, there are a lot of small galleries that do an incredible work.

“Most Chinese galleries do not act like European ones”.

Most Chinese galleries do not act like European ones, as they sell points.

That means that artists do not give real exclusivity to the galleries. So the earlier mentioned pragmatism gets obvious: “If I need you, I come to you. If you need me, you come to me”. But this is changing because now the Chinese are looking to what is happening in the Western galleries

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and respectively what is happening with the Chinese artists there. Where they have to compete with the laws and rules of the Western galleries.

Now, artists in China want to have more exclusivity and galleries strive for exclusive contracts with artists. Nevertheless, it is still an open game.

“If I need you, I come to you. If you need me, you come to me”.

The Collectors The Chinese art survived because of the Western collectors. The most important was Dr. Uli Sigg, who is now becoming a legend, as he is a courageous and a real collector. Chinese do not even have money to travel or to live and Western collectors, including Sigg, were giving them the money. Western collectors marked the beginning of the support of Chinese contemporary art. It was the period of “love”.

But why did we collect Chinese contemporary art? In my own personal experience as private collector of Chinese contemporary art it was a shock when we first travelled to China in 2005, to see what is happening, the speed, the scale, the energy of the transformation of the country. We came to the conclusion that art is the mirror of a society. And so we thought: let’s try to find the energy we can see in the art.

This marked the start of the collection. But back in Paris we were confronted by several severe problems, such as the lack language knowledge; the distance to China; the missing institutional validation; no real galleries and “a crazy market”. The aim was to make a museum type of collection, as at this time there were only a few of those. The other reason why we collect Chinese art is due to its uniqueness, and naturally the potential of the market, but not in regard of numbers but by looking at the history. History teaches that art follows money and that art follows power.

Who are the famous Chinese collectors? This is an abstract world for many people and everybody is looking for them. There is a new generation of Chinese collectors coming from the Chinese diaspora, but also from the Chinese midland. The most known one is BudiTek,

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who is the “king of chicken” in Indonesia. He has an incredible Chinese collection, although it is currently moving more towards Western art, because his model is Francois Pinault. Another one is Wang Wei, who has spent 350 Million Dollars in two years for her museum in Hong Kong.

What I’m trying to say is that the Chinese people are deep pocketed and if they decide to do something, they invest the energy and the money to do it. To give an example Zhang Rui, who is one of China’s biggest contemporary art collectors he has collected over 800 pieces in the last decades. He made his money as a telecommunication entrepreneur and is now part of a group of wealthy Chinese who dominated the domestic art market. A few years ago, he was one of five mainland collectors, who bought half of the most expensive contemporary artworks that were auctioned over a three-year period. Zhang spent two years in prison, because he was accused of bravery, which again underlines the fact, that in China you never know what is going to happen.

What do Chinese collectors buy? Chinese collectors mainly buy antiques, porcelain and to a much smaller percentage also oil paintings. Most important is the place of purchase, having Beijing a 45% of the sales and Hong Kong only an 18%. This is also connected to the fact that Christie’s and Sotheby’s have been authorized to make sales in China, but they can open the door only to a certain and little extent, because they cannot sell anything from before 1949. Due to this restriction their market is very limited in China. On the other hand, the Chinese galleries are going to Hong Kong, because the medium price of what is sold there is much higher than in Beijing. Therefore Hong Kong tries to attract Taiwanese collectors and others that cannot be attracted in Beijing.

How do the Chinese collectors buy? There is a very interesting article

by Adam Lindemann published after the Hong Kong Art Fair in 2013, where he made an interesting analysis of how the Chinese are buying.

Chinese society is emerging from 60 years of Communism. They want art they can make money with, they’ll pay attention, but they have no patience for the Western art market’s taboos about buying for resale, or its dealer’s moralistic credo against the “flipping” of artworks at auctions. The tacit prohibition against selling primary works at auctions is contrary to the very nature of the Chinese; in fact, they want auction action. The Chinese love to gamble and to speculate.

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There are two points of view on why will Chinese buyers acquire a taste for Western art. There is a globalization of taste, and Christie’s or Gagosian Gallery, for example, would do what the rest of the world is doing. On the opposite, specialists in Fine Arts would negate this question as they outline that China was never influenced by other countries. They say that Chinese people have too much culture of its own, so that is the primary need to deal with, rather than to collect Western art.

In terms of how the collector foresees the future, according to the Economist the “Chinese art buyers are the new Medicis”. About art, it is important to point out that there has been the period of Japanese, Russians and Arabs. Now it is the moment of the Chinese.

The Auction Houses In China there are four main auction houses: Sotheby’s, Christie’s, China Guardian and Poly. The first auction house in China was China Guardian founded in 1994, which is much younger in comparison to Christie’s, created in the 18th century. Therefore it cannot be accepted for them to become the same. It has taken Christie’s two centuries to be what they are in the West.

The most important aspects of Christie’s in the Chinese market are: - 25% of all Christie’s buyers are from Asia.

- The importance of online sales to them.

- Secondary and tertiary cities in China bear a huge reservoir of buyers.

This last point was especially one of the reasons, why Christie’s and Sotheby’s wanted to enter the market. Poly Auction in contrary is an incredible auction house that belongs to the Poly group, which is not the state, but the army liberation people. It is a 40 billion Dollar asset company and they want to become global.

In comparison of both concepts, Poly made it very clear, that they are Chinese and that is why people in China come to them. Steven Murphy, the CEO of Christie’s, on the other hand expressed that they nevertheless have a chance in China, because they have the experience and they

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consider themselves capable of installing concept, as identification of their buyers and their typical Christie’s features. “What we have is nationalism versus experience”.

“Bringing in the Western auction houses was like putting a crocodile in a pond. It makes the fish swim faster”.

China has opened its market to foreign auction houses on the will of Chinese government to clean their own art market industry, in order to create a new market based on international standards and values. This will be supported by the motivation behind this tactic, expressed by Ms. Zhang, head of the Chinese auction association: “Bringing in the Western auction houses was like putting a crocodile in a pond. It makes the fish swim faster”. Basically, this states the drive of the Chinese government to pursue something important with all their effort and accuracy while striving for ultimate success.

The way for foreign auction houses to succeed in China is considered to be very simple. You just give a 28 million euros gift to the government.

This is how Christie’s opened their door to China. It is very important in China to relate to the government. Therefore, Christie’s surely did not just gifted a sculpture, they are doing much more far beyond that. For instance, they organise exhibitions with Chinese institutions. Thus, the key to enter China is the collaboration with the government.

This builds a natural bridge to the influence of the Chinese state, which has many heads. First, the state is highly present in the art world, because it is about money and power. Contemporary art does not exist in China because it equals a creative industry. The roots lie in the governments attempt to use art as soft power. In 2011 the Communist Party even dedicated a whole discourse of how soft power should be used in the West. They want to become a strong global cultural power. Further they want to do something about culture that appeals to outsiders and does not waste time talking about the emergent cultural battlefield. Here, again their pragmatism is mirrored in the way they want to conquer the West. This way contemporary art is free and is the more cultural

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sector that is free in China. But it is not that simple, as for the usage of soft power, the ability to seduce and attract people is required, which is not the case today, as people in the West do not like China and are rather afraid.

Conclusion First of all, it is impossible to separate the market from the social and political context. The Chinese art market will be huge, but it will be dictated by Chinese taste and they are going to play by their own rules.

Honestly, in the beginning Dominique and me had a lot of doubts about the end of the collection, as it is so complex to collect Chinese art. It felt like an impossible dream. But we did it for one reason: the collection was a way for us to discover a new country. It is not about a project. It is about an adventure, because it was part of an incredible transformation of society, that human mankind has never seen before. I used to say to my students: Money takes care of my body, art takes care of my soul.

Therefore, my soul is in very good hands through our collection. “Money takes care of my body, art takes care of my soul.

Therefore, my soul is in very good hands through our collection�.

CONTRIBUTIONS AND QUESTIONS (C/Q) FROM THE AUDIENCE Q. Could you elaborate a bit about the role of the curators in the Chinese market?

The definition of a curator in China is something very vague. It is difficult to say exactly what is a curator because they have many heads in China.

On one side, he is representing some artists, or he is writing critics in newspapers. Nevertheless, there are some very influential curators that can push artists into the market. They still have an important role, but

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not as curator, rather as promoter of a certain number of artists. The European definition of a curator is not applicable there.

Q. Do you think that there also might be the possibility that the Chinese are also in terested in our artists, non-Chinese, whom they would take care of?

I can say that they will be interested in the margin, but the margin can be a big number in China. However, they really want to collect their own people, because they want to connect with their own fellows. It is something they can connect to, as it is their own culture. Surely, they can buy a Picasso from time to time, but this will not be a rule.

Q. Will you show your collection in some museums?

It needs to be said that it is a very young collection and therefore we do not want to show it today, just for the sake of having a show. We want to deliver it at the right time, at the right place and with the right message.

Otherwise we decided to show it online; due to the possibilities of the Internet everybody is everywhere at every time. But the decision was especially made because we want to show it to the Chinese people and whatever we do, we do it in Chinese and in English. And I can tell you that a lot of people in China are interested in what we are collecting and the way we are doing it.

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Claes Nordenhake Founder and director of the Nordenhake Gallery, Berlin-Stockholm. Member of the Art Basel Committee since 2003. Nordenhake opened his first gallery in the mid-1970s in MalmÜ, which moved to the Royal Academy of Art building in Stockholm in 1986. His gallerist work expanded in 2000 and he opened the Nordenhake Gallery in Berlin near Checkpoint Charlie. In 2005, he and six colleagues promoted the Gallery Weekend in Berlin, and two years later he moved his gallery in Berlin to a new location in Lufthansa’s historic central office, in Lindenstrasse, very close to the Jewish Museum. In 2008, he and his six colleagues came together again to launch the project ABC-Art Berlin Contemporary, the annual event in which several galleries and artists participate.

Ann Demeester Appointed Director of the Frans Hals Museum | De Hallen Haarlem. Former Director of de Appel arts centre and head of De Appel Curatorial Programme. Demeester is on the editorial board of the magazine F.R. David, and is the host of the programme 4Art on Dutch National Television. Recently she has published essays on Michael Borremans, Jennifer Tee, Salla Tykka, Sung Hwan Kim and Bjarne Melgaard. She co-curated the 10th Baltic Triennial (2009).

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Art fairs vs. non-fair models who do they serve?

SPEAKERS Claes Nordenhake in conversation with Ann Demeester CONCEPTS art fairs, local markets, alternative formats, collaboration, profit Vs. non-profit

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Claes Nordenhake (C.N.) We still do not have the solution to integrate the everyday activity with the monster and the blessing, which are equally important. In 2013 I was at a small art fair in Bogota and it was a very good experience for several reasons, its size and mainly Latin American galleries where shown. It made me reflect about how apparently most of the super galleries use the art fairs, and in particular the small art fairs, to dominate that very local market. For instance, in the case of Colombia, Venezuela and Peru, they try to get the most important collectors from each country. By participating once they are cannibalizing that market with their presence and reputation and are getting all the attention.

Although at the art fair in Bogota none of the famous galleries were presented because organisers understood that it would take away the message of the particular identity of their art fair.

Ann Demeester (A.D.) Why did you choose to be present at the art fair?

C.N. Because we were invited with a special project. On top of that, one certainly is doing art tourism as the trade brings them to such places.

A.D. Is it an specific strategy of your gallery to go to niche art fairs in other continents rather than bigger fairs, where you are not familiar with the market?

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“where do we go from this absolute concentration of business deals that are taking place in the art fairs?”

C.N. No, but I suppose that every gallery tries to find new ways. In this particular case we were invited to a project. But what I also wanted to address is the question: where do we go from this absolute concentration of business deals that are taking place in the art fairs?

In my opinion, with the experience of running a gallery in Stockholm and in Berlin, where I have lived for the last ten years, Berlin is a very particular place. There used to be an art fair called Art Forum which ceased existence a couple of years ago, because a group of local galleries did not support it sufficiently enough. Thus, it did not manage to cover its own costs. It had high importance in the first years, as it was founded shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall and a high interest of the world in the art dynamics of Berlin were present. Nevertheless, a city like Berlin defines itself by the number of artists acting; the number of spaces available for little costs; and the number of galleries, which are currently around 500. Of which at least 10% of them are the best in Germany and maybe also in Europe. “a city like Berlin defines itself by the number of artists acting; the number of spaces available for little costs; and the number of galleries, which are currently around 500. Of which at least 10% of them are the best in Germany and maybe also in Europe”.

German gallerism has been influenced by the Fascism until 1945 due to the Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art exhibition) and Communism.

The German colleagues were not very interested in a collective or a cooperative manifestation, which is a consequence of this heritage.

Some time ago, a few colleagues and I started thinking about the development of an alternative to this known type of art fairs. It resulted

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in the event called Gallery Weekend Berlin, which has become a success for different reasons.

A.D. In which sense is it a success? The number of buyers it attracts or the attention in general? How do you measure success?

C.N. Around 50 galleries organise and pay for a long weekend of different artistic events, mainly in the galleries, with the ambition to bring audience from other venues like art fairs, back to the galleries. We really believe that there is a symbiosis relation between the artist and the gallery and not a parasitic one. Further, we consider that commerce is an important part of this process, as an artist is a small entrepreneur, who should be protected and relieved of the duties that the gallery takes over, in order for him to concentrate on their actual work. One of the consequences is that we want to bring back the galleries as the main stage for the artistic manifestation. “Certainly everything in the gallery world is pragmatic, but surely we wanted to call the troops back to the galleries, as we believe that this is the place where the main work is performed�.

A.D. So, with the Berlin Gallery Weekend you wanted to draw the attention back to the gallery, as the site of exhibition and existence of work?

Do you think it is a format serving as an alternative tool, because you explained it as not antagonistic towards the fair, but rather complementary? Further, is it a coincidence, because in Amsterdam a similar event called Capital A was initiated after the fair ceased, which is also a gallery weekend. The myth about Amsterdam and Berlin is that there is rather a small market and that urges both to create an event to achieve sufficient attention of collectors. Thus, it is the question if there is a real need of an art fair or a gallery weekend to achieve that.

Therefore it has a pragmatic, but also an ideological goal?

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C.N. Certainly everything in the gallery world is pragmatic, but surely we wanted to call the troops back to the galleries, as we believe that this is the place where the main work is performed. However, you cannot be sure that every country or city suits this model, but in Berlin it does with his recent history, where everyone in the art world is very aware of the Cold War. We managed around 10.000 and 15.000 visitors every year at Gallery Weekend Berlin, who are highly motivated. Beyond that, we also tried to create another event called ABC (Art Berlin Contemporary), which is an exhibition curated by the galleries taking place half a year after the Berlin Gallery Weekend. This exhibition has had various curators that oversee the installations.

A.D. That is why ABC is a collective exhibition by the galleries, curated by an external curator taking place in a specific venue?

C.N. It is usually in an old station, where the curation is done by a coordinator. The galleries decide to apply with an specific project, which needs to be accepted by a jury.

A.D. What is the difference to a regular art fair?

C.N. It is an art fair, where there is no variety of artists, as every gallery is proposing one artist.

A.D. What are the advantages of this format being launched?

C.N. It has not become the success that we have expected it in the beginning.

An art fair needs to have a market, but a market is not as present in Berlin as one would want it to. In addition, the galleries in Berlin are dependent on the international participation, which has made it a difficult situation.

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A.D. It seems that the two complements somehow have a blurring line. For example, Konrad Fischer who organised the Prospects exhibition at the Kunsthalle DĂźsseldorf, where the strict divisions of profits are blurred in a positive sense. Where the gallerists, again, take up a very polymath role of being the curator, the sales person, etc. But you created a kind of positive confusion, is that correct? “Personally, there is not a big difference between the non-profit art world and the gallery system, as they both work towards the same goal with only slightly different means.

I do not understand why it is considered to be finer to receive a paycheck from the state or the city every month than financing both artists and your own activity with sales�.

C.N. Personally, there is not a big difference between the non-profit art world and the gallery system, as they both work towards the same goal with only slightly different means. I do not understand why it is considered to be finer to receive a paycheck from the state or the city every month than financing both artists and your own activity with sales.

A.D. Do you think that this mixture of profit and non-profit is a recipe that serves as a prospective?

C.N. I think that it has been my generation, as Marxist, who has created this ethos that profit and commerce is bad while an idealistic venture such as receiving a paycheck every month is good.

A.D. Would you say that there might be a different format apart from the Berlin Gallery Weekend or ABC, that could be complementary to the fair?

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“Personally, there is not a big difference between the non-profit art world and the gallery system, as they both work towards the same goal with only slightly different means. I do not understand why it is considered to be finer to receive a paycheck from the state or the city every month than financing both artists and your own activity with sales”.

C.N. The believe in cooperation is there, it is the only way to succeed. It is very important to support the educational processes in this sector, as there is no specific education for gallerists. In this way, De Appel’s initiative to develop an art school for future gallerists is incredibly interesting. At the time, when I was a member of the Art Basel committee, the considerations were once that the task of the fair itself were to actively engage in the educational problematic, by for instance creating a jobcentre for this specialisation and an exchange platform comprising the lack of an educational system. That is also why most of the colleagues around the world had other jobs until they decide to be part of the business.

A.D. Thus, would you say that instead of decreasing the “power” of the art fair it should be given more functions, such as sales, discourse and education?

C.N. Those additional functions should become more a natural centre of information. Moreover, some of the art fairs should assume a certain role in this process of adapting their functions to the dynamics and demand of the sector. Finally, this move should come naturally rather than initiated from within the committees or from the galleries, who propose an idea to the fair.

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CONTRIBUTIONS AND QUESTIONS (C/Q) FROM THE AUDIENCE Q. Do you think that the success of Berlin Gallery Weekend is also due to the fact that Berlin has held other art fairs before, as they have a certain capacity of bringing people from other countries, which is already proved?

C.N. The Gallery Weekend initiative started parallel to the existing art fair at that time, about 10 years ago. But I would think that cities with a certain structure, such as Barcelona are capable of organising such an initiative.

Q. How much do the art galleries in Berlin have to pay to the organisation of the Gallery Weekend to sustain it?

C.N. Each gallery had to pay 7.000€ in 2012, which covers the coordination, participation in the programme, advertising, a final dinner for around 1.000 people. It states 50% of the cost for a small art fair. Nevertheless, it might appear as a high sum, therefore mainly profitable galleries attended.

“The believe in cooperation is there, it is the only way to succeed. It is very important to support the educational processes in this sector, as there is no specific education for gallerists”.

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MODERATOR

Daniel McClean Lawyer specialized in art law, intellectual property law and media law.

McClean works in London with the different sectors of the art market, including artists, collectors, dealers, galleries and museums. He advises clients on a range of contentious and non-contentious issues from ownership and authenticity to the drafting of agency, consignment, commissioning and sale agreements. His clients include Artangel, The Arts Council of England, Tate, La Colección Jumex, Gagosian Gallery and Pilar Corrias Gallery. McLean is actively involved in the art world as an independent curator and writer and has commercial gallery experience. In addition, he is the commissioning editor of Dear Images: Art, Copyright and Culture (2002) and The Trials of Art (2007).

SPEAKERS

Ana Letícia Fialho Research coordinator and commercial intelligence consultant for Latitude Platform for Brazilian Galleries Abroad, a partnership between the Associação Brasileira de Arte Contemporânea (ABACT) and the Agência Brasileira de Promoção de Exportações e Investimentos (Apex-Brasil). She holds a Law degree from Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul; a Masters degree in Gestion et Développement de Projets Culturels from Université de Lyon II, and a PhD in Sciences de l’Art et du Langage from the École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS). Fialho has collaborated with institutions such as Cinema do Brasil, Fórum Permanente, Fundação Bienal do Mercosul, Ministério da Cultura, Museo Nacional Reina Sofía, among others.

Alberto de Juan Founder and director of the Max Estrella Gallery in Madrid since 1994. Current president of the Consorcio de Galerías Españolas de Arte Contemporáneo and former member of the committee of ARCO and ParisPhoto. The Max Estrella Gallery opened with the objective to promote both young and established artists with an innovative artistic language. Max Estrella Gallery pays special attention to artists working with new media. That is how it won the ARCO/Beep Award in Electronic Arts with the piece Nature Morte by artist Charles Sandison at ARCO13. It has also won the PhotoEspaña´s award Festival Off with the exhibition Humanae by Brazilian artist Angelica Dass.

Eva Moraga Lawyer, founder and Director of Por & Para, a firm that specializes in art Law and intellectual property, legal and professional advice an consulting, training and career development for professionals and organizations in the arts and culture sector. She is the coordinator of the working group “Transparency in the art sector” at the Instituto de Arte Contemporáneo. Eva Moraga holds a Masters in Museum and Gallery Management from the Department of Cultural Policy and Management at City University in London, a B.A. degree in Visual Arts, and a Masters in Art History both from Complutense University.

She also holds a B.A. in European Law from Rouen University and a Masters in the same subject from Madrid’s Complutense University.

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CODE OF PRACTICE: How to standardize and make gallery practice more transparent

Moderator Daniel McClean SPEAKERS Ana Leticia Fialho, Eva Moraga, Alberto de Juan CONCEPTS contracts, transparency, commitment, artists, galleries, art fairs, collectors, buyers, distrust, understanding, legal parameters, business relationships, “gallery nightmare�

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DANIEL MCCLEAN (D.M.) The title suggests three main aspects, first of all, that there is possibly no standard or transparent model in the gallery practice and art world at the moment. Following this, it would be secondly desirable to change this situation. Thirdly, how would we do this. Another title for the panel could be “to contract or not to contract�, as part of our discussion will focus in contracts in three main areas: between galleries and artists, galleries and collectors, and between galleries and institutions. Along with the main parameters for the discussion we will deal with issues and problems of the previously mentioned three areas. How can they be changed? How can they be subject of greater legal regulation?

Relation between the gallerist and the artist ALBERTO DE JUAN (A.J.) The art world is an atomised sector consisting out individuals with distinct points of view. This results in a problem of associanism, where it is extremely difficult to define a general rule, when it is not even possible to come to an agreement among the galleries. There has been a movement in the past year in collaboration with the Instituto de Arte ContemporĂĄneo, an institute formed by gallerists, artists, critics, museum directors and even collectors. The mission was to find codes among this, one was the relation between the artist and the gallery. Although no conclusion was achieved, it teached a general lesson regarding a restrictive view of the association of artists, as they did not show any will for cooperation. My proposal is to formulate a written contract ideally or even an email.

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D.M. It might be more important at first to highlight problems and issues where there are no agreements, before start talking about models to change the current situation. From my perspective as a lawyer I would advise gallerists and artists, where there has not been agreements in place. Personally, I am not the typical proponent of contracts, sometimes the less regulations the better. Two very recent examples of problems, first, there is the so called “gallery nightmare“, where an artist was build up for a long period of time and once the artist got a high reputation, he wants to leave the gallery after being approached by a big dealer, the initial gallery has no power or security for such developments. This is a common problem from the dealers perspective. On the other hand artist do have legitimate reasons to leave a gallery, where they no longer agree with the practice of subsiding the gallery from the earnings generated through their sales, as they might have own debt to pay. But often all their works on consignment are stored at the gallery. Plus they do not have proper accounting records. Here the question is what can the artist do in this scenario? What are the concrete problems of not having written agreements?

“the real problem is not to find an agreement, rather than the points to be discussed need to be clear”.

EVA MORAGA (E.M.) It has been shocking in the last days to hear collectors and institutions complaining about the way galleries approach them. When at the same time galleries complain about the artists in the exact same manner. In the end everyone is complaining about everyone. As an art lawyer, it is important to know about the expectations of both parties of an agreement. The galleries have expectation about the artist’s behaviour, while they do expect certain services and treatments. Along with this, the real problem is not to find an agreement, rather than the points to be

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discussed need to be clear. From my experience the artists complaints are generally when they enter in a new relationship with a gallery, because they do not have enough information about how this relation is going to evolve over the time. In terms that they lack the knowledge of how to deliver their work to the gallery, plus if the gallery is going to take care of their work, how and when they are going to be paid. Furthermore, they do not know, who is going to buy their works or if they will get to know the name of the collector. So the artists have difficulties to ask the right questions. In this regard, I believe that the problem in Spain to reach an agreement lays within in the responsibility of the associations with different professionals involved, which do not provide drafted documents. Thereupon, the Visual Artists Association proposed a contract with a guideline, which was not appropriately checked and overlooked by the galleries, which could led to suggestions in order to enhance it and make it truly useful, as it needed simplifications. “we pursue yearly light surveys with the galleries to get qualitative and quantitative data revealing their current situation and perceptions of their market�.

ANA LETICIA FIALHO (A.F.) Latitude is a private public initiative by the Association of Brazilian Contemporary Galleries with an agency of the government, that works to promote 80 different economic sectors abroad. It is encouraging the Brazilian industry to get into the international market. As the head market researcher in Latitude my role includes planning strategies. Our understanding is that research is the basis of planning and developing strategies for the sector as a whole. Therefore we pursue yearly light surveys with the galleries to get qualitative and quantitative data revealing their current situation and perceptions of their market. Moreover, it is a tool to monitor aspects like employment amongst others. Concerning transparency in the relationship between galleries and artists, in the association only 50% of the artists have verbal agreements. Other have a mix, between verbal and written parts. Nevertheless, all expressed the wish to change, but at the same time they ask themselves how to process.

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There is a consensus to achieve a more formal and clear relationship, although it is not happening yet. Further, the artists are very sceptical in terms of taxes declaration, conditions of the agreement and the invoicing process. On the other hand, specific to the Brazilian art market, the artists do not like ink on the paper. Therefore, Latitudes plan for 2014, was to offer workshops for them covering the field of accounting and tax advantages when opening a company.

D.M. Alberto are you brought in favor of having contracts for as a gallerist or rather not having them?

A.J. In my opinion it would be great to have a contract and formally discuss all relevant issues with the artist. Sometimes we even tried to put it in a written paper, including the discussed points such a concrete project, production or fair. But I remember, that Kamel Mennour, who after all this years still has no papers as everything is going via handshake deals.

D.M. But do you know his motivation for this? Was it because of suspicion?

A.J. Well, I cannot talk about him, but myself, and I tell you that for example, that last weekend I had a dinner with an artist I have been working with for already 14 years. After this time, I do not feel that it is appropriate to call him by saying that suddenly things are changing and we have to sign a contract. This surely would cause irritation on the other side, with such a history where everything is clear and sorted out. Therefore, if a long lasting relation to an artist already exists the necessity of such a contract might be questionable. Moreover, if everything is documented through Email communication it serves as a kind of contract already.

D.M. Totally, it is a myth to think that there is no contract, as there always is some kind of a contract. It is more the problem to know what the terms of the contract are. Therefore, I think that is one of the good reasons for having a written contract, because when you try to instruct lawyers to piece together the respective contract without something written or properly recorded it is a nightmare territory. Thus, in the end the lawyers are actually the ones who win.

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A.J. Yes, because there needs to be a collaboration agreement with all the items that have to be discussed without any advises. The gallery and the artist can come to different agreements in each item, which would be the ideal solution. This concerns especially new artists more than with those known and worked with for a long time. There is no real need, although it would be great, but it is difficult.

E.M. It is a question of knowing, what to discuss. Surely, there is always a verbal agreement and this emails are contractual documents and are valued in front of the court. Thus, it is not the format of the paper where everything is explained, but what is read. Therefore, a checklist is a very good idea. For instance, yesterday I was doing a little survey among the gallery owners present here at Talking Galleries, asking them about their thoughts concerning transparency and contracts. 90 per cent of them changed the topic of the conversation, because they were not interested in it.

D.M. I think you are absolutely right, due to notion of galleries in general of rather not having written agreements.

E.M. Well, they think the agreement cannot derogate the relation between the gallery and the artist, as could prove of a lack distrust.

D.M. Nevertheless, there is a movement that suddenly the high end of the art market where galleries want to standardise the relation with the artist.

There is also a lawyer in New York called John Silverman, who acts for artist like Richard Sara. He acts as their lawyer, eases negotiations and drafts the agreements. Therefore, we also should think about questions later on like: What is the market? Where do such agreements make sense? Which type of galleries and artist fit to those standards? Thus, we are certainly in a situation where the culture of a contract has to be seen in all of its specifications and different contexts.

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A.F. I would like to comment, that different generations of galleries deal with this question. But in the Brazilian market, which is a new and growing market, more than 50% of our galleries were created after the year 2000 (figures are based on a survey with 50 contemporary galleries). Those young galleries are much more formal and business orientated. They have contracts with the artist, plus at the same time the artists that enter the market want to have things clear. The young galleries are much more concerned with those issues, because they have not been around for such a long time, so they cannot build on trustful relations that grow over time. They proceed totally different to those galleries from the 70s or to important artist that do not sign anything. Nevertheless, it is changing, so it is highly depending on the profile and type of business. The new generations have a different attitude towards that.

D.M. It is very hard to respectively curate contracts and legal regulations. So when you have been in an relation with an artist for 10/ 15 years that is an issue.

A.J. Sure in case if the contract is made after all this years. But, anyway I agree with you, that: “You do not have to kill a fly with a nuclear bomb�. You have to see the size of the gallery, the types of artist. Most of the people would like to know what to do with a small or medium sized gallery, or artists that are starting. It is not too difficult to do this checklist, including defined obligations for each involved party.

E.M. Shortly, I just wanted to make another comment: I think, that sometimes people are afraid of lawyers. So us, as lawyers should reflect on the language we use for our document. It can be much easier without legal words that tend to scare people who are not familiar with the meaning behind it. Therefore, my opinion is that lawyers have to make an effort to promote and ease the gallery-artist relation. The artist and the gallery should arrange a mutual meeting with a legal representative, where every side expectations are shared and discussed in legal regards. This could simplify the process enormously and to finally translate into a written paper.

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Relationship between galleries and collectors, museums and other institutions.

A.J. If we have an obligation to the collector, it has to be dealt with the artist.

The Association of Galleries in Spain together with the association of collectors we have tried to achieve an agreement upon the way of dealing when doing a sale. What needs to be given to collectors. Thus, the already mentioned checklist should not be done only for the artist, but also for the collector in order to have clear settings of what he gets.

D.M. What would you suggest?

A.J. Well, the same thing, all the galleries should be informed and advised, that as long as they have received an invoice from the artist, that it needs to be sent to the collector, by displaying the technical information about the artwork, including a manual to handle it appropriately. Thus, it included the provision of certifications, especially for new media art. I learned a lot from my artist, as they sometimes even have a book telling how the work is to be installed in case they might die. Surely, this is very dramatic, however this could be a hint of how things should be done.

D.M. Yes, also this legacy can be protected over time. Often collectors are short changed by galleries through scanned documentation. Sales are sometimes concluded through a sales invoice. This causes a lot of problems, especially in the secondary market. For example, the recent ... scandal, where is not adequate diligence, profits are disclosed, there is the possibility of fakes on a big scale. So you have title and ownership issues. All of these are results of the capacity and lack of regulations that are often found particularly in the secondary market. Just to give you a personal experience, three years ago, I have been instructed by a major museum abroad, a major art work by a major artist. The artist said at the time it is an unique work, but now it has been discovered that it was copied as an additional frame. This rises very interesting questions about author indication. In this case, from both sides, the museum and the artist and gallery side, it got obvious that you do not know how deal

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with such a situation without any contract at hand. Thus, the contract issue is much more about the absence of documentation.

A.F. The important role of sectoral organisation and associations is to prepare and guide the emerging galleries in all these aspects. All in order to get them more professionalised, which avoids early on later problems.

Especially, when it comes to new media, they need to know how many editions should be produced for example.

E.M. At the same time we have to be very cautious concerning the word “standards“, because still everyone wants to be independent and free in the way of managing their own business. When we talk about standardisation I start stumbling, due to the fact, that we are still in the private sector, where people make autonomous decisions. It is important to know which are key issues, but later everyone has to decide how to behave.

A.F. Sure, but giving the tools and information, it can be looked at the practices of others.

A.J. We are working within a world that is changing very quickly. A few years ago everything used to be about paintings, sculptures and photography. Everything was more or less easy and clear. Now, with the new media and various options to produce a work, we get simulated and know what to do, but actually we are learning at the same time we are practicing. The more you practice, the more you learn about the different procedures. There are probably galleries and artist, who at the beginning cannot follow existing codes, because new developments occurred. Surely, the work to standardise the practices needs to be further encouraged, but it is not easy.

D.M. I like what everyone is basically saying not to create prescriptive models, but if there are contracts in terms of educating people and to understand how to apply all discussed issues in the respective context. Although in that respect, it should not be a didactic way by obliging default

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procedures. Preferably it needs to be a manifesto or an open document instead of a closed formula.

CONTRIBUTIONS AND QUESTIONS (C/Q) FROM THE AUDIENCE C: Someone suggested that the major art fairs should do contracts between the galleries and the buyers. Apparently, in the rush of the opening of an art fair a lot of art is sold and bought, that is later withdrawn mainly by the buyers. There should be a standard procedure at least for the main art fair, by proving a preformulated contract, which is simultaneously signed by the gallery and the buyer. This could enhance the legitimate situation.

A.J. I have suffered from that several times. We have a contract for unfamiliar collectors and ask them to sign it, in order to agree that it is bought, although they do not have to pay it immediately. Therefore, I support the idea of implementing a general practice, where all galleries proceed in the same way where collector and buyer need to make sincere decisions.

D.M. Who would enforce it? Would it be an association, the fair or a specific gallery? I think if it should be strong, more than just a gallery, the fair itself enforcing it. Am I right?

C: Yes. The gallery is a different situation.

D.M. Can I ask a collector in the audience, what they feel about that issue?

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C: I am pressing galleries to do it. For me the question about who should enforce it, is simply, because technically and legally it is the same as buying any other product. There are certain rules concerning the time, where you have the right of retraction towards when the purchase is happening. Those rules should be equally applied to an art fair. When I shake hands or sign a gallery document, I am perfectly aware that this is effecting my budget and that it can make or break a gallery. So, when I hear and witness this massive wave negation related to the current crisis, where collectors tend to back down without expecting any consequence, I personally do feel ashamed. I do not understand why galleries are not chasing those buyers the same way auction houses do. Why is there a difference in the art world comparing to other industries where the buyers have legal responsibilities?

D.M. It is a matter of power, isn’t it? It is about, who you are as a collector?

C: No, I do not get why there should be a difference between, for instance, buying a Rolls Royce or an artwork.

A.F. Well, I do think that there are some differences. The art market deals with relationships, as the collector is not a client the gallery is going to see just once. Therefore, galleries are afraid that they might get in trouble with an important collector, who then will not come back and could moreover damage the image of the gallery. Certainly, the risk the gallery is taken should be minimised.

D.M. It could protect the collector as well. Because there are times, where the galleries offer works, although they might not understand what they are actually offering. So, they can withdraw the offer, when a more important collector comes along. For example, an important gallery managed to sell a work twice to different buyers.

C. As a practical example of that, I bought a piece from the MusÊe d’Art Moderne in Paris from a French gallery in Paris. It was done at the

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opening of the show and I offered them to pay immediately, because the show lasted for two more months. But after a month nothing happened and I did not receive an invoice. So I contacted them, but she thought I did not want it anymore since I never called asking for the invoice. This situation really upset me as I knew that they had sold it to someone else, which they denied just offering me another piece that I was not interested in. Eventually, I talked to the artist who told me that it actually was sold to Francois Pinault. It is a real story.

D.M. Did you sue the gallery?

C. No, I did not sue them directly. But I made enough noise to make it well-known.

D.M. This a very helpful demonstration of the problems we are facing.

C. It would take of the heat of both the gallery and the buyer, if there would be an official contract issued by the third party, namely the art fair. It would take away this unpleasant moment to force your will.

C. I have a question for Alberto de Juan or even the entire panel. A friend of mine was a copyright lawyer, whom I always asked for advice for the non-profit institution I am running. I asked if we should or should not have contracts with students, artists or gallery, with whom we co-produced. And he actually agrees to Alberto’s idea of not doing a contract, but a mutual agreement with a list of issues. At the same time, we never had a conflict with anyone, therefore I do not know what would happen in a situation of disagreement. Therefore, my issue goes along with the suggestions of my lawyer, who saying that contracts are only about expectation management, not about legislation. So, you could also do a survey with an artist. The question is more about, if contracts are really expectation management or should they be really tools for legal recourse in cases of conflict?

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E.M. They are guidelines. I was reflecting on this, when I started working in this sector. We were talking about contracts, between artists and galleries. It is almost 15 years ago. But nothing has changed. We are still confronted with the same debate. So, there must be other hidden reason behind it, that prevents the implementation of a guideline or contract.

For instance, there is a book with contracts, but no one knows about it, although it was proposed to some artists and galleries.

C. I do not know why there is such a discussion about contracts, as I think it is far more convenient to do an agreement with my artists, which is protecting both sides. Surely, with the era of Internet more problems in terms of copyrights are present among other problems. Therefore, it is important in my point of view to have a minimal agreement, which should be fairly easy. It is a business where money is transferred. So it should be a transparent agreement without any expectations, that fit to all involved parties: gallery, artist and collector.

D.M. Is there someone in the room, who is actually against contracts?

C. The gallery stands for the artist. So, I do not see the problem between the artist and the gallerist, as the artist needs the gallery to sell a work.

Thus, I figured there is a much high necessity to have a contract between the gallery and the buyer, rather than between the gallery and the artist.

A.J. Well, it has to be in both directions.

C. I do not know. In the case of being an artist, I would like the gallery to take care of my work. Because as an artist I do not know anything about money.

A.J. But then I have a contract with the collector and he is asking me for something you are not giving me (‌)

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C. No. The deal is the following: you are the gallerist and I am the artist, who says: take care of my work. So, that is a contract. I do not need a contract. It is simply that the gallerist should take care about the artist’s work and money.

A.J. But nevertheless it needs to be clarified in which points I am taking care of the artist. Because suddenly he or she might have not thought about one particular aspect and disagrees.

C. No, because I am the artist, who is sitting in the studio creating, while you are on the business side in the art world, because you have the connections and contacts. All I do not want myself to get involved with.

E.M. You said the artist does not know anything about money. But in my opinion, artists and gallery owners are having a professional relationship.

Consequently, the artist and the gallerist are at the same level, where they have the right to talk in a transparent way about all issues. Therefore, I propose to avoid the kind of patronising way to talk about the artist. I am encouraging artists to be informed about their rights and obligations including ethical obligations. If you are a professional in another sector, you are always signing a contract, which is absolutely normal. So, I do not see the problem in the art world.

C. I am a gallerist for 30 years now and I have never signed a contract. I am not against them, but I think we are situated in between two expressed positions. Some years ago, our association Art Gallery Barcelona prepared a document which was not meant to be a contract, but it was a signed paper we made every time the artist would make a deposit at the gallery.

So, if we talk about the contract, I think it is difficult because there are certain romantic and philosophical aspects of our relationship. Once we try to translate those into a written contract they become extremely hard and maybe even connotate against the artist or the gallerist. Thus, the opinion shared by the colleagues here among us, it got obvious that the artist needs a paper, stating exactly which work has been deposited at the gallery. Moreover it includes principles that define the regulation

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and dealing with the works including practical elements such as online reproduction. However, it should be avoided to include the philosophical aspect that actually determines this special relationship.

C. From my short experience as a young gallerist, where my artist are really young, I can say that a contract needs to be specific to each category of artist – young, mid-sized or established artist. I had an experience with a young artist that did not want to sign a contract but instead to proceed one year without it to see what would happen. From this I assume that artists have the mindset, that they want to be free in case they want to back away from the gallery, as there are a lot of collectors and opportunities to approach numerous good galleries. So, it is not so much about trust, but about the fear of being restricted to one gallery exclusively. Which is the reason why we do not succeed to have contracts?

D.M. That is a real valuable question. I think that there is commitment on both sides. When artist want to leave galleries they are free to do it without any repercussions, in contrast to other cultural industries, where there would be a compensation at some point. Should an artist compensate if they leave their dealer? Do you feel it should be an ethical question more than a legal regulation?

A.J. I think that there is good faith, which is good. But for instance, it is necessary to have a third party like the fair, who overview the “good faith� and the final outcome in case a party rejects the done agreement finally. Thus, it would be a solution that the fair is provided with a list of collectors, who tend to neglect agreements. As I do not know, if that is legally possible, it could be just an information for the fair and the galleries. A young artist should be free to leave a gallery, when at the end of the year the gallery missed the chance to promote them adequately.

If it is the other way around, that the gallery did fulfilled its duties, but the artist leaves nevertheless, it should be natural, that he compensates the gallery.

E.M. I just wanted to respond to the previous question out of the audience.

Was the contract flexible enough? Was there the possibility in the contract to be valid only for a year for example?

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C. The problem is that there is too much flexibility on my side. As I explained before, I offered the artist several options, a 6 months or a one year contract, even to sit together with my lawyer free of charge to discuss everything in detail. But some artists just refuse to understand it in general. Therefore, you need to have general contract which can be personalised to the speciality of each artist. It is even better to have a lawyer as a further employee. Beyond that there is a necessity of sharing a contract between galleries that share an artist, because there are very non-transparent codes between galleries. Especially when dealing with young galleries.

C. I would like to come back to questions between buyers and sellers, as the approach to involve an art fair at this level is very interesting for me.

Whereas we have no knowledge about what the relation to collector is and how they are established. Is it legally possible, that an art fair takes on a mediation role in a relation we actually have no access to?

E.M. As I understood it, it was not a claim for mediation, but for an official form that can be followed. So, it is easy to elaborate a contract draft, that can be used without any problem as an official form.

D.M. I totally agree.

C. Me too. But then my question would be if we can force this upon the gallery to actually do it? Does every gallery participating in an art fair want to have that contract signed between them and the collector?

D.M. This would be a question directly towards the galleries. I would imagine it as a binding model of practice.

C. I think that some are hiding behind the art fair. If a legal framework for bought goods at hand. I really do not see the point in involving the art fair.

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D.M. Again, I think it is connected with the power issue. If you are a small gallery, it is difficult to take on big collectors.

C. It is not about “to take on�. They have the commitment once a work is bought, so it is independent from the question of power.

A.J. Well, I would love to have that paper. My problem is that regularly my client signs the paper and rapidly forgets about it. At the end of the fair you call him to discuss different points of the purchase, but he has already decided that he was not going to buy it. Therefore, there should be a simple paper clearly stating that a piece was bought or not. When all parties are informed about collectors, who tend to pursue like this and create unpleasant situations, all the other attached parties would just benefit from it.

C. I agree with my colleague. You are delivering a service to a collector and vice versa, he is buying something and you are selling something.

So it is a mutual agreement, where the art fairs do not have anything to do with your sales nor access to any numbers. If we should be the ones, who somehow be liable if a payment is done or not. We would want to have copies of those signed contracts. Although, I am not sure, that this is wath everybody wants in terms of transparency. Sure, there can be a simple document saying that piece was bought, but how can the art fair take responsibility for that transaction to take place.

A.J. It is more the function of a witness, which can make the collector think twice, what he is actually signing.

A.F. It is just giving the document more weight. The fair is not going to sue the collector, but to provide a document for the galleries that arises the awareness of the collector. Hence, I completely disagree that the fair organisers have nothing to do with the sales, as they bring collectors and create a business environment for the galleries. It is in interest of the fairs to know they have clients that disappear on the last day.

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A.J. I agree, that the fair is not responsible and it is not about the sale details. It is more about seeing who committed to a purchase and then disappeared.

C. These things tend to happen very often at art fairs. Therefore, the art fair should counteract by providing a form that enhances the fulfilling of contracts. Either it is verbal or written, but surely the authority of a written contract than the spoken is much stronger. We are not asking the art fair to enter into a legal position, just to produce a document, serving as an art fair acquisition contract.

E.M. It would be more a type of recommendation the fair is giving to the galleries.

C. It is funny, to observe the discussion from both sides, because it could be a mutual opportunism. The fair gets the exact numbers of sales and the galleries get the desired authority. It could be an exchange.

C. I do not ask the art fair to enter in any other action, than to produce this contract that enhances the actual acquisition process at an art fair. That is everything I am asking for.

Q. I just wondered if any of you had any experiences in the creative industries apart from the visual arts, perhaps in music or acting where parallels with contracts exist?

E.M. In the music sector people are surprised how in the art sector they do not sign contracts.

D.M. In music industry there are managers, who procure agreements between the recording company and the artist. So, the question could be whether the role of artist’s management will increase in the next decades.

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E.M. It is the same in the publishing industry between publishing house and author.

A.J. As I already said in the beginning. Our problem is that we are all individualists. In this regard there is no sense of working together as association in all aspects. Probably this is the origin of the current situation. Everyone wants to stay autonomous, so agreeing on a contract is sometimes impossible.

D.M. Looking at the music industry, courts have found exploited relationships between music companies and artist groups, where the manager come out very badly. That is one of the reasons where there has been this great circulation. For example, when young artists have signed up for bands, they often step aside these agreements to be avoided later on.

Legal representation done in a very one sided way. For example, George Michael had a very famous case about this in the UK. Those sorts of precedents might have the same role in the art world. A lot of it is driven by money.

C. I am very new to the art world, so it might be a naive question, if you buy a limited number of special Rolls Royce, you are not leaving without the magic words “down payment�.

A.J. I am still afraid to see how shepherds still close deals with a handshake in the countryside. Unfortunately, this is still not uncommon in our art world as we heard. But in a few years there are going to be more papers to regulate it. Also necessary, because we not only have problems with the artist and collector, but also with the critics and the museums.

Because there are moments where the critics do not understand that we are representing and promoting artists, not only selling their works, which is only a little percentage in the work of a gallery. Nevertheless, the critics are still proposing projects to the artist without informing the gallery, who is actually in charge to define those strategies. The same with museums who are only contacting the artist to buy a piece and leaving the gallery aside. Therefore, I think there is a big general

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confusion that is related to a learning process in terms of professionalism that is not completed.

A.F. It is true that we are in special relationships, but we are in a very complex role in a globalised world. A good example are the international fairs where you do not know who you are dealing with. So it needs to be clarified.

D.M. It is also impossible due to the internationality of which law applies to the sales. The results are endless disputes. The first problem a collector is facing is to figure out which law forms the basis.

A.F. Definitely, and coming back to the relationship between artist and galleries. When galleries represent international artists they do have contracts, as there would be no guarantee at all for them.

Final comments by Daniel McClean It was emphasised that the involved parties need to make an effort to see the counterparts and their mindset. Those from the gallery need to reflect more about the own behaviour and provided information to the art world about their exact practice in order to decrease confusion and lack of knowledge. From the panel it can be concluded that contracts can enhance trust and transparency as well as they can help building a valuable relationship going forward.

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Billy Maker Since 2008 he is the Senior Account Director of exhibit-E, a firm that has taken a leadership role in providing websites for the art world, and for which Maker has been working since 2002. Maker works with exhibit-E clients to identify their specific needs and business objectives, identifying and implementing strategies, products and services that help achieve the gallery’s website goals. Maker oversees the design and production processes working closely with exhibit-E project management and design teams. He also advises on social media trends, analytics, online advertising, and marketing initiatives. He has managed production of over 200 websites including Matthew Marks Gallery, Lehmann Maupin, Mitchell-Innes & Nash, The U.S Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, Marian Goodman, The Bronx Museum, Marina Abramovic Institute and The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation.

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SPEAKER Billy Maker CONCEPTS responsive design website, social media, coherent strategies, email-marketing platforms, QR Code, social video

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Gadgets & Tools, how technology can help you The first thing I want to talk about is Exhibit-E, which was founded in 1998. It is a website developing company, that focuses on website for the art world. Exhibit-E is located in the heart of Chelsea in New York, where they have helped over 300 galleries to produce websites and online presence. It was not a typical start-up company, as it was backed with 25 years of print design experience through Dan Miller Design, who created the first catalogue for the Gagosian Gallery. They have a long history of print design and also experience in the art world. When exhibit-E started operating, galleries started building or thinking about websites, but there was a frustration about how to maintain them, who to consult, how to update and actually build them. Therefore, they started building them with admins, which gave the galleries the ability to update them themselves.

If we go back to 1998, with the basic HTML, everything was really rudimentary due to a slow Internet, where not everyone was online.

Moreover there were not enough tools to build a website. Thus, they had only this basic structure to start developing websites.

In the year 2000 Flash websites came along, which are still built and used today. This development was amazing, because it allowed them to do what they produced on print and convert it to the web. So a beautiful experience could be created, similar to walk into a gallery. Now one was able to get someone’s business card, which brought them to the website, where they found the exact same typography and beautiful images. Now subtle and elegant solutions were possible due to the ability to experiment and this even completely without any flash animations.

With YouTube entering the market in 2005, they triggered a massive change, as the website suddenly was not just a passive place anymore, but it became interactive for the users who now were able to control

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content on the web. Consequently, it also changed the perceptions and understanding of the web, also as the social media development was in its early stages. “all I heard at art fairs was: “I cannot view my website on my iPhone“. So this brought a new problem, as flash websites were not supported by this device”.

In 2007 all I heard at art fairs was: “I cannot view my website on my iPhone”. So this brought a new problem, as flash websites were not supported by this device. iPhone changed the way of website development especially in regard of mobile websites, which changed the standard of usage to build them and drilled down to a handful of useful tools after the death of Flash one year later. In 2011 there was a raise in responsive websites, which work on all different devices and provide a seamless experience. Nowadays, there is an interaction independent on third party software like flash or other gadgets and tools to connect with social media and numerous plug-ins. As a result standards established to develop a website today.

“In the art world it is about having a conversation with the gallery. To talk about their very own programme, the number of artist they have and the type of gallery they are”.

How does this apply to the Art World?

In the art world it is about having a conversation with the gallery. To talk about their very own programme, the number of artist they have and the type of gallery they are. The ladder is the most important issue in the beginning, as it marks the point of departure of their working process.

It is important to know how many art fairs they attend per year; if they

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can support videos on their page; what types of artists are represented and if there are either very active or if they work with different mediums or in series. Our conversation is first to get to learn about the client’s needs, before even talking about technology. When you are developing a website the first question to make is: what type of gallery are you?

To understand the three different approaches, if it is primary market, secondary market or private dealers, I introduce here three example websites of galleries.

The Lehmann Maupin gallery, as an example of a primary market website, has a dynamic webpage where they are able to announce at the front page all the artists that are having an exhibition. Due to their highly active artist raster they need the ability to show the difference between available and selected works, next to the standard function of viewing them. By taking the example of the artist Mickalene Thomas, it can be said, that if you choose a big splash picture that fills the whole page, a connection with the artist can be established. Details of the artist can be found once went into the website, including selected works and videos. It is important to think about how the webpage should be used as a tool. Therefore, it is significant for Lehmann Maupin to display the history of the artist’s pieces and what it is currently available, in order to get a view of her works over time.

As the primary market gallery is working for the artist, it is distinct to show the exhibition and other external projects. The impression of getting all the information about one artist needs to be conveyed to the user, not by just providing a slideshow with topics, but true provision of informative content.

In contrary the Mnuchin Gallery did not display any inventory on their webpage, due to the fact that they have secondary market work.

Consequently, the focus lies in making the exhibition the centre of the site, where each individual artwork can be seen; event photos, videos, press releases and selected press are also available. All necessary information around an exhibition is provided. For a primary market gallery, that might not have much information about an artist, they had written biographies about the artist, next to a show off of the exhibitions in the gallery. So instead of solely showing sample pictures of artworks, they are showing the history and the relation the gallery has with the artist.

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As a third example, the private gallery Ezra Chowaiki, has a webpage that is rather a calling card than a mere show off site. They have a small sales section, a simple information page and some video Chowaiki has done for art fairs. They choose an easy and clean way to bring their message across, which is at the same time easy for them to update.

In the sum, it is necessary to discuss what each of them has done and what needs to be explicitly supported by figuring out the most important features that should be implemented, integrated and highlighted. “ it needs to be clear who is the audience, as in case of a younger generation the incorporation of social media aspect should be taken into account, what older people might not necessarily think about”.

Design and functionality There are some additional factors for design functionality in a gallery’s website. For example, when a gallery has multiple locations they need to reflect if the programmes are balanced. It needs to be shown online the different levels of activity in the different locations. Additionally, it needs to be clear who is the audience, as in case of a younger generation the incorporation of social media aspect should be taken into account, what older people might not necessarily think about. Also the interaction with documents is important, for instance an artwork with multiple views requires a careful attention what details should be displayed for the potential collector or others. Thus, it is utterly necessary to know who is going to view the website and what message we want to get across.

Google analytics is a further tool that helps to figure out where the users are coming from and what language they speak. According to this analysis the webpage can be adapted and translated to different languages. Although it is not necessary to provide all languages at the beginning without knowing who is really visiting the site. Plus, if translation is required, it does not have to be the entire web page. What is essential is that the user is able to navigate the page smoothly.

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The issue of what type of visual can be supported leads to have a close conversation among the gallery staff securing that is clarified. It is important to know who is in control of the content, to have a plan to roll out the desired images and to have the consistency on what to do when.

For example, to have the images ready of an installation to put up the following day or to upload the press releases before than the images. All these considerations are necessary to have a consistent plan, which at the same time keeps costs low.

Website tools About the tools that can be used to build our website; firstly the website admin should be considered, which is especially crucial in order to guarantee easy updates by all staff members without any specialised knowledge required. “If a gallery has a social video, YouTube is the choice because it gives the ability to share and reach more people�.

YouTube and vimeo are other highly favorable tools for gallerists. If a gallery has a social video, YouTube is the choice because it gives the ability to share and reach more people. If it is an artist or an installation video, I recommend vimeo, as it allows to take off all the labeling for 100 Dollars a year and let it appear self-branded.

In 2011 the responsive website design started to be used, where is it not necessary to programme a site for each device. The webpage will fit the size automatically on each of the devices and all the contents will be the same. Besides that, a programme with knowledge about how google indexes a website is highly favorable, because otherwise it is difficult to be on top of the list in the google search engine. Another parameter that brings a good listing place, is good content, meaning written content rather than only images in order boost the SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

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Also there is the omnipresent QR code, which is simply a website address, which can be created for free through an online QR generator.

This could be used at art fairs, where this code is placed next to the painting by informing the client, that more information about the artist can be found under the link. But it could also be in front of the gallery, at the press release or at any other desired place to attract more attention.

Other gadgets for websites enable to see work in more detail like Zoomview. The tools added to the website should not be disconnected from the overall design, but should be naturally integrated. Whenever using technology on your website it should always be clean and fit the structure of the site. In addition, the 360° view enables the get a feeling for the real dimensions of works and space, which not immediately provide by 2D pictures. An advantage of this tool comes along with the fact that it is mainly used by hotels and therefore specialists not attached to the art world at a much lower cost are available. On the website itself, only a snip bit is implemented, while the real file lies somewhere else on the server. Again to allow a clean appearance.

“Private rooms are also tools that can help galleries, as they allow to create an exclusive preview of an exhibition to collectors”.

When doing a publication without printing it, issuu.com is a webpage that can be the right platform for online publishing at a low cost.

The publication needs to be uploaded at issuu itself first, but it can be embedded and linked back to the own webpage. This encourages people even more to buy the book, rather than discouraging them, as you give them information, that makes them excited about the publication.

Private rooms are also tools that can help galleries, as they allow to create an exclusive preview of an exhibition to collectors. There you can have a structure environment that is under the umbrella of the gallery, where they can experience the work in the same way they would do in a private room at the physical gallery itself. The key is to keep the quality of all touch points of the gallery as high as the artwork, the gallery space and as the publications and books printed. These private rooms further can

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be built for one client individually or for several. On the other hand, the Private Press room is a tool to avoid sending numerous emails and press releases on a constant basis or dealing with unfamiliar softwares to share images. Instead this limited access page can be created containing all necessary press information and material acquired by the press to write articles or other media activities.

For Email-Marketing various providers are available, such as MailChimp, Constant Contact or Campaign Monitor. All of them offer simple templates that enable simple branded consistent newsletters, which generate immediately recognition on the receiver side. On top of that, it allows you to keep track of the marketing action, as you can follow up who reads it, subscribe or unsubscribe. Thus, you can track and see what people you are interested in. “a coherent strategy needs to be established, containing the intervals and frequency of posts either weekly or only at every exhibition�.

While talking about the factor of social media, the importance of achieving a consistency among all different platforms, might it be Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Google plus or Instagram. Plus a plan, a coherent strategy needs to be established, containing the intervals and frequency of posts either weekly or only at every exhibition. It is not necessary to use all of them, but the selection must be wise. A tip is to overlap information in different social media such as Twitter and Facebook, which can be embedded to the webpage too. Furthermore, the balance between formal and informal use is necessary, as Instagram and Tumblr can be used for instance in a more casual manner than Google plus.

As a closing statement, there are several key points that should be followed when building up a gallery webpage. First, any kind of gimmicks are to be avoided by concentrating on the most significant elements the message demands to be carried efficiently. Therefore, the tools chosen need to be taken care of and constantly updated, otherwise their existence is senseless and it is recommendable to close them down

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like inactive accounts. Also redundant difficult technology should be removed, because it should intuitive. Lastly, in order to guarantee the repeatedly mentioned consistency, the content has to be managed structured aesthetically.

CONTRIBUTIONS AND QUESTIONS (C/Q) FROM THE AUDIENCE Q. Which email marketing provider do you personally recommend?

B.M. Either Campaign Monitor or MailChimp, while the first one is normally more user friendly. Nevertheless, you can work with your website developer, who can build templates for you, so that it is consistent. Those platforms give you the ability to create design templates, that you do not have to recreate every time, as it is about to convey the message every time. Thus, Campaign Monitor allows you an easy and quick handling.

Q. Could you identify anything that they are working on at the moment that could be possibly useful for the gallery industry in the near future?

B.M. Yes, some of the social media platforms, such as Tumblr that has just launched a new platform for galleries. Bigger companies are working on some big art world websites, such as Artsy or Artspace. But whatever trend comes in I always suggest to let it sit for a while, before getting involved. Or one can get involved with, but should use and test it inhouse first, before going online in order to be sure, that is actually an effective and right tool to use. For instance with a blog it makes sense to examine if there is enough content available to fill it sufficiently.

However, I think that the development in terms of tools and gadgets for the mobile and responsive websites it is just at the beginning and the real push is still about to come.

Q. Do you think that the QR code is going to have bigger penetration in the

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Gadgets & Tools, how technology can help you

society? There are many people that do not know what it is exactly. Is it something that is going to stabilize or rather to decline?

B.M. We had basically the same response, that a lot people do not know what it is. But one client used it at an art fair and ended up with a surprising result at their booth and now they do it every art fair. But nevertheless, you can always try it, because it does not cost anything, you just need to put some effort in it.

Q. How much does it cost to hire exhibit-E to build a website?

B.M. Honestly, it does not cost much. Small galleries can have a website for less than 1.800 Dollars. In February 2013 we started a platform by bridging the gap between the lower cost and the large websites, in order to have an appealing website under 6.000 to 7.000 Dollar. This step originated over the last 10 to 15 years, that galleries always asked for a similar set of components. Thus, they wanted to create a model template, where the can easy add different tools. By doing this we can still build customised websites at a lower cost. With this we want to open the door to any budget.

Q. I wonder, if you would not recommend the raising big content management systems such as Wordpress or Juma? And if so, what are you adding as a company?

B.M. I recommend it as long as it is supporting the used system, where an easy relation and update of inventory is possible. This is especially significant in terms of building new functional section, rather than just adding content. It needed to be kept in mind that the flexibility can be limited up to a certain point. Concerning your second question, the way that we build the website, is to make the back end equally beautiful as the front end. It is not a platform that is used to build websites for endless other companies. Instead, it is focusing on the art world, where you can display easy different visuals and animations. Thus, the training with client is kept as easy as possible, because a simply understanding to handle it is secured.

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Produced by

INSTITUTIONAL SPONSORS

EDITING Conrado Uribe with the assistance of Marina Díaz-Cabrera COPY EDITING & TRANSLATIONS Sue Brownbridge Adeline Vogelsang Ingrid Pratmarsó ART DIRECTION Inoutsiel Studio PHOTOGRAPHY Xavier Torrent

SCREEN PROJECTS DIRECTION Emilio Álvarez Carlos Durán

Printed in 2014

PARTICIPANTS Georgina Adam Clare McAndrew Albert Baronian Daniel McClean María de Corral Ann Demeester Ana Letícia Fialho Victor Gisler Ainhoa Grandes Massa Jeanine Hofland Noah Horowitz Alberto de Juan Sylvain Levy Billy Maker Bartomeu Marí Kamel Mennour Eva Moraga Claes Nordenhake Lisa Panting Emilio Pi Alain Servais Jocelyn Wolff

Produced by

www.talkinggalleries.com www.screen-projects.com