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

71–80 of 200 posts

Re: Lessons I learned working at an art gallery

#71

Post by krisoft »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #68
irjustin wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 i…

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

And Vincent van Gogh is not. Or was not a great artist, then he died and become a great artist somehow suddenly after his death. (at least by that definition, which just to make it clear, I don't agree with.)

Re: Lessons I learned working at an art gallery

#72

Post by thih9 »

trosi wrote: post #60
thih9 wrote: post #43

> If we want to make the world a better place, we can’t just think about the lofty stuff: we have to get our hands dirty and make sure the economic engine works. This seems a very narrow if not conformist view of art. Artists doing graffiti, participating in hobby groups, state funded projects, discovered by later generations, etc - they don’t care about making viewers feel good about funding; and yet their art can v…

It is perhaps a narrow view, but not an incorrect one. You mention state funded projects, but the funding has to come from somewhere else. What the author is saying is this: it takes money to run a gallery (or a museum, for that matter), therefore even if it is not the primary objective, we should strive to keep the money flowing so that we can make have better galleries/museums.

Actually the money doesn’t have to come from anywhere, that’s my point. If we cut all state funding - I’m sure artists would continue making art, as they did for millenia. We encourage art with state funding because we consider it beneficial to the society[1].

The “keep the money flowing” approach distracts from making art and leads to making art that sells well. Do we really want that to dominate galleries/museums?

[1]: “American taxpayers concur, with 55% supporting increasing federal investment in the arts, 57% supporting state government funding for the arts and 58% supporting local government funding for the arts” https://www.delawareartsalliance.org/government-funding-arts...

Re: Lessons I learned working at an art gallery

#73

Post by Dylan16807 »

ben_w wrote: post #48
Dylan16807 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How long does setting up an exhibition take, and what kind of hours are you expecting? 4-8 are workday hours? And what kind of question needs to be answered that fast, but wasn't important enough to be asked several days earlier? My feeling is that there should be very few such questions, few enough that each artist can safely take half a day if they get one.

A day and a half is slow even in software, and software doesn't have things like the example given of wanting a wall put up then asking for it to be taken down again. Sure, software does have bad communicators who change their minds, but revert is relatively easy.

> A day and a half is slow even in software,

We're talking about half a day, not a day and a half. Or really, less than half a day.

> and software doesn't have things like the example given of wanting a wall put up then asking for it to be taken down again.

The wall example was taking place over "weeks". If there is still an urgent question about wall-building a few days out then it sounds like someone waited much too long and that's the real problem, not the extra four hours.

Re: Lessons I learned working at an art gallery

#74

Post by Tade0 »

trosi wrote: post #60
thih9 wrote: post #43

> If we want to make the world a better place, we can’t just think about the lofty stuff: we have to get our hands dirty and make sure the economic engine works. This seems a very narrow if not conformist view of art. Artists doing graffiti, participating in hobby groups, state funded projects, discovered by later generations, etc - they don’t care about making viewers feel good about funding; and yet their art can v…

It is perhaps a narrow view, but not an incorrect one. You mention state funded projects, but the funding has to come from somewhere else. What the author is saying is this: it takes money to run a gallery (or a museum, for that matter), therefore even if it is not the primary objective, we should strive to keep the money flowing so that we can make have better galleries/museums.

The narrowness makes it incorrect.

Galleries are necessarily behind the curve because they're businesses and have to stay afloat. You typically don't go to a gallery to see something new, but to see the works of an already established artist.

Meanwhile interesting, innovative art happens outside of galleries, but you have to look for it, as there's an oversupply of aspiring artists.

Bottom line is you can't base the whole art scene on the opinions of art galleries, as they play it safe and art is strictly about the opposite.

Re: Lessons I learned working at an art gallery

#76

Post by zenogantner »

People here in the comments seem to focus on whether it is possible to predict an artist's success based on secondary "civic" virtues, and criticize the author for having subjective criteria for what "success" means. I'd argue that independently of how you measure success, all other things being equal, having diligence and other civic virtues will get you further, on average.

That said, the most interesting lessons are in the first and sixth (the 2nd 6th, the actual 6th) item: How to do a better/more widely scoped job than what you got hired for (by understanding how interests, incentives and responsibilities align in an org) and the fact that in most places, most people are not serious (meaning they tend to not go deeper, look at the big picture, etc.).

Re: Lessons I learned working at an art gallery

#78

Post by ValentinA23 »

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…

https://www.zmescience.com/science/physicist-shows-that-to-b...

Albert-László Barabás, a physicist, created a network map that can predict an artist's future success based on their early network connections. His work outlines two key "laws of success":

- Performance drives success, but when performance can’t be measured, networks drive success. This highlights the importance of networks when objective measures of quality are difficult to establish.

- Performance is bounded, but success is unbounded. This indicates that small differences in quality can lead to large disparities in success due to the amplifying power of social networks

Barabási's model can predict an artist's career success with surprising accuracy based on the venues of their first five exhibitions. This model underscores the importance of early connections and the venues where an artist exhibits their work, which can significantly influence their long-term success4.

Re: Lessons I learned working at an art gallery

#79

Post by jonnycomputer »

ValentinA23 wrote: post #78
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…

https://www.zmescience.com/science/physicist-shows-that-to-b... Albert-László Barabás, a physicist, created a network map that can predict an artist's future success based on their early network connections. His work outlines two key "laws of success": - Performance drives success, but when performance can’t be measured, networks drive success. This highlights the importance of networks when objective measures of qua…

This is great to think about. Glad I ran across this comment.

Re: Lessons I learned working at an art gallery

#80

Post by blitzar »

ValentinA23 wrote: post #78
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…

https://www.zmescience.com/science/physicist-shows-that-to-b... Albert-László Barabás, a physicist, created a network map that can predict an artist's future success based on their early network connections. His work outlines two key "laws of success": - Performance drives success, but when performance can’t be measured, networks drive success. This highlights the importance of networks when objective measures of qua…

I guess this is why a sucessful genius can tape a banana to a wall while a run of the mill worker can only restore Notre Dame to its original state.
Post reply on HN