Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Lessons I learned working at an art gallery

henrikkarlsson.xyz

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 200 posts

Re: Lessons I learned working at an art gallery

#61

Post by jonathanstrange »

m463 wrote: post #11
beltranaceves wrote: post #2

Some years ago I decided that, at some point in my life, I would try and involve myself with a gallery or museum. As with all things, it depends, but it seems to me that in such places you can find some of the most authentic and driven people out there. And it's probably quite fun to work with them.

> the most authentic I have found the most authentic folks are the low-key ones that have a booth at an arts festival or some other show. I've been to galleries, and thought the vibe was really un-authentic. maybe I've been to the dysfunctional ones. Maybe that it is that galleries are more about something else than the art, more meta. (and they sold art not like this community gallery) Don't know the reality of muse…

I don't get what you're trying to say. Most art galleries are businesses. They exhibits artists and artworks that sell. There is nothing un-authentic or dysfunctional about it; to put it more precisely, dysfunctional art galleries won't last very long, just like any other business that offers products that aren't in demand and don't attract buyers.

Are you saying that galleries usually don't last very long and tend to be commercial failures?

Re: Lessons I learned working at an art gallery

#62

Post by dkga »

bleakenthusiasm wrote: post #33
grammarxcore wrote: post #3

I refuse to believe that not answering every single email within an hour is a good predictor of anything other than being glued to your phone. I think extending it to a reasonable amount of time, maybe a business day max, works out pretty well. Sometimes people respond really fast because they’re taking regular breaks and other times they don’t respond all evening because they’re putting on their kid’s birthday party…

I read this as "answer within the hour when preparing an exhibition". If you are in full swing to get an exhibition up and running and this is the time you decide to throw yourself into deep focus work, you are probably hard to work with. I would also assume if some artist told the author "look I know we open on Tuesday, but this Friday we have my kid's birthday so from 4 to 8 I won't be easy to reach", this would pr…

I read it like so too. I don’t typically respond to emails immediately unless I have my email application open (which I rarely do as I do enjoy time to do deep work). But in the lead up to a big event there is no way I would go radio silent, unless I’m unconscious in the hospital.

Re: Lessons I learned working at an art gallery

#63

Post by KaiserPro »

Another, perhaps less triumphant account of the art world is here: https://profilebooks.com/work/all-that-glitters/ which for me is a very interesting read. If reading isn't your thing then it has a good audio book, but also this might be of interest https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/m001nwhs

Re: Lessons I learned working at an art gallery

#64

Post by fenomas »

krisoft wrote: post #38

The problem here is that I don’t trust the author on being able to tell who is the “best artist”. Clearly he has opinions. But for example in point 3, he says he can predict which exhibition will be great based on how easy it is to work with the artist. He predicts that some exhibition will be crap and he is right! Which sounds impressive until you notice that he is not measuring his judgement against something objec…

> in point 3, he says he can predict which exhibition will be great based on how easy it is to work with the artist

I strongly assumed that bit was about him predicting whether each exhibition would be "great" from the gallery's perspective - in terms of attendance or revenue or whatever metrics they used. It's not spelled out, but since the whole piece is about him focusing on the business and ops side of things, that bit probably was as well.

Re: Lessons I learned working at an art gallery

#65

Post by cynicalsecurity »

outlaw42 wrote: post #15

i was a security guard at an art museum for a long time. it was the only job i could find after being laid off from my software gig. thanks for sharing

This is odd. What country and period was it?

Before Covid, everyone on LinkedIn was bombarded with job offers as and soon as they created an account and put anything IT related on it.

Re: Lessons I learned working at an art gallery

#66

Post by m463 »

jonathanstrange wrote: post #61
m463 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the most authentic I have found the most authentic folks are the low-key ones that have a booth at an arts festival or some other show. I've been to galleries, and thought the vibe was really un-authentic. maybe I've been to the dysfunctional ones. Maybe that it is that galleries are more about something else than the art, more meta. (and they sold art not like this community gallery) Don't know the reality of muse…

I don't get what you're trying to say. Most art galleries are businesses. They exhibits artists and artworks that sell. There is nothing un-authentic or dysfunctional about it; to put it more precisely, dysfunctional art galleries won't last very long, just like any other business that offers products that aren't in demand and don't attract buyers. Are you saying that galleries usually don't last very long and tend t…

I'm saying:

Talking to a guy in an arts festival booth, the conversation is usually about the art.

Talking to a guy in a gallery (in the US, that sells art for other people), the conversation is usually about me (sizing up a sales prospect).

Note that galleries I'm talking about are for-profit - selling people's artwork and paying the rent. If you do talk to the artist, it is some artist-attends gathering and there are a lot of other people talking to the frazzled artist too.

the gallery in the article seems different, it is a community coop and might have a different dynamic.

Re: Lessons I learned working at an art gallery

#67

Post by magicalhippo »

krisoft wrote: post #38

The problem here is that I don’t trust the author on being able to tell who is the “best artist”. Clearly he has opinions. But for example in point 3, he says he can predict which exhibition will be great based on how easy it is to work with the artist. He predicts that some exhibition will be crap and he is right! Which sounds impressive until you notice that he is not measuring his judgement against something objec…

> He writes “What you see in the biographies of great artists, great writers, great anything is that they are good at figuring out where the vectors align.” Which is just plainly and absolutely not true

I take it the author means "great" as in "successful".

Re: Lessons I learned working at an art gallery

#68

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

irjustin wrote: post #55
krisoft wrote: post #38

The problem here is that I don’t trust the author on being able to tell who is the “best artist”. Clearly he has opinions. But for example in point 3, he says he can predict which exhibition will be great based on how easy it is to work with the artist. He predicts that some exhibition will be crap and he is right! Which sounds impressive until you notice that he is not measuring his judgement against something objec…

> But if your definition of “great art” is that it is commercially succesfull then of course what you will find that the “great artist” are all like good businesman. While the author doesn't explicitly define what is "great", I 100% believed that what it is defined as. That "great" is being commercially successful. The article is premised around running a non-profit art gallery in a struggling municipality. That he d…

By your definition, super-successful kitsch-meisters like Thomas Kinkade are great artists.

That's quite a niche view.

In fact art is an overlap of many different kinds of markets selling to many different kinds of customers - from people buying phone wallpapers online, to tourists buying souvenirs on holiday, to oligarchs laundering money through prestige purchases.

And many others.

A community gallery is going to intersect with a couple of those, but not all of them. Sustainable funding is a goal, but maximising income isn't.

Financial success doesn't sane wash narcissistic entitlement, of which there is plenty outside of the arts.

Re: Lessons I learned working at an art gallery

#69

Post by naming_the_user »

ponow wrote: post #57
naming_the_user wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re trying to systematise something that is more like basic human nature. It’s like trying to explain why people like attractive people from a utilitarian perspective. In the real world I just prefer to interact with people who prioritise me over other things and most people are the same.

Yet some artists do believe that it's morally wrong that producing whatever they deem as good art isn't guaranteed to be self-supporting. They shouldn't ultimately have to answer to anyone else's opinion to earn a living. Which is highly entitled, and non-evolutionary.

Anyone who thinks that the Universe owes them is sorely mistaken.

Re: Lessons I learned working at an art gallery

#70

Post by krisoft »

irjustin wrote: post #55
krisoft wrote: post #38

The problem here is that I don’t trust the author on being able to tell who is the “best artist”. Clearly he has opinions. But for example in point 3, he says he can predict which exhibition will be great based on how easy it is to work with the artist. He predicts that some exhibition will be crap and he is right! Which sounds impressive until you notice that he is not measuring his judgement against something objec…

> But if your definition of “great art” is that it is commercially succesfull then of course what you will find that the “great artist” are all like good businesman. While the author doesn't explicitly define what is "great", I 100% believed that what it is defined as. That "great" is being commercially successful. The article is premised around running a non-profit art gallery in a struggling municipality. That he d…

> While the author doesn't explicitly define what is "great", I 100% believed that what it is defined as.

I understand that is his definition, but then talk about that. Instead of saying that the exhibition ended up "mediocre" say that "ticket sales were lower than expected" or "sold less paintings than we hoped for", or "didn't bring in anybody".

Because as is he just writes "after weeks of this you end up with something mediocre" and "predict which exhibitions would end up great". That is very vibes based. Did he just not enjoy those exhibitions? Or is it tied to something objective outside of his head? (such as revenue, or crowd size, or critical acclaim) The first is not interesting, the second is.

> That he did a good job by "helping grow the revenues"[0].

Or did not do a good job. Base on the very sentence you quote which starts "It helped that the year I started ...". Doesn't give me the impression that even the author believes it is all their doing. Very easily someone could write the same story from a differed perspective "we hired a guy to run the café, but he was way too distracted to keep consistently at it. First he ruffled some feathers with the board then he mellowed out so we kept him around. He pooh-poohed artist who was not as responsive in electronic communication as he would have liked, but we told him softly that is not his decision and to shut it. At the end he was only showing up sporadically and then left to write or something." We only have his world on it and even based on that his track record is less than stelar.

Post reply on HN