Lessons I learned working at an art gallery
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Lessons I learned working at an art gallery
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Re: Lessons I learned working at an art gallery
#2Some 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.
Re: Lessons I learned working at an art gallery
#3I 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. Even at work, sometimes very good colleagues are doing things back-to-back for hours and using short windows to do things like go to the bathroom.
On the other hand maybe this is some art thing I’m too far away from to understand? Maybe really good artists to work with never need more than twenty minutes of deep focus at a time for anything?
Re: Lessons I learned working at an art gallery
#4Some 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.
Artists are like engineers. The types of decisions the two groups make are wildly different, but each group makes decisions for a living and focuses the rest of their time on craftsmanship.
Also like engineers, the best make far better decisions, or are far better craftsmen, or both.
Re: Lessons I learned working at an art gallery
#5I 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 did take some issue with the way that point was phrased as well.
but, i took it a little more broadly than it was actually specified: people who are not great about communicating or make it hard for you to work with them at the outset will probably continue to be like that throughout the entirety of your working relationship.
i watch some videos on the Tested youtube channel, where the host is Adam Savage, who was one of the hosts/creators of the MythBusters tv show, and he often talks about this point, and how he learned it working with Jamie Hyneman early on in his career where they would take clients, and Jamie explained this principal.
Re: Lessons I learned working at an art gallery
#6I 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…
Artists tend to be in art production mode or sales mode. When in sales mode and doing exhibitions, etc., good ones are very responsive.
They work for a a year, or maybe several, then there are sales to be had over the corse of a month or so. The work they are selling is finished.
Would you work on something for years, and then when the time comes to maybe sell it — not answer the phone?
Re: Lessons I learned working at an art gallery
#7I enjoyed reading this, but I felt that 90% of this person’s experience was simply the result of being a real contributor in an organization with non-existent expectations/completely un-optimized state/no other real contributors.
In other words it’s easy to make a difference as a high performer in a low performance organization.
Again not detracting from this persons achievements, I just don’t think these most of these observations apply in high performIng organizations
Re: Lessons I learned working at an art gallery
#8I 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…
Artists tend to be in art production mode or sales mode. When in sales mode and doing exhibitions, etc., good ones are very responsive. They work for a a year, or maybe several, then there are sales to be had over the corse of a month or so. The work they are selling is finished. Would you work on something for years, and then when the time comes to maybe sell it — not answer the phone?
People that work at art galleries are not artists.
Re: Lessons I learned working at an art gallery
#9I 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…
This is an uncharitable take. Who said anything about an interruption every 20 minutes? We're talking about an artist doing an exhibition at a gallery, by any measure, this is a pretty significant collaboration that is in the artist's best interest and not something their getting spammed with dozens of a times a day.
If you read and digest the article, the point is not to create a litmus test based on time-to-response, it's to recognize there are a lot of people to talk a big game but are unserious about achieving shared goals.
If an artist is not responsive because they are so serious about their creative process that they don't have time to respond to a gallery doing an exhibition than maybe that's the right thing for what they are serious about, but it does jack shit for the gallery staffer who is serious about creating an exhibition.
Re: Lessons I learned working at an art gallery
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
Artists tend to be in art production mode or sales mode. When in sales mode and doing exhibitions, etc., good ones are very responsive. They work for a a year, or maybe several, then there are sales to be had over the corse of a month or so. The work they are selling is finished. Would you work on something for years, and then when the time comes to maybe sell it — not answer the phone?
People that work at art galleries are not artists.
The bit in the article about email responsiveness concerned artists