“soMe Artists go to lArger, estAblished gAlleries
And get lost,” SayS CharleS GuiCe. “i like to think i CAn
pAy More Attention to An Artist.”
Dealers also show work to collectors by traveling to meet them or arranging private viewings. Katz has a viewing room in her printing shop to host collectors and
show them prints, which gives her the ability to select work specifically for each
collector. “I get to curate work based on what I feel their individual interests will be,
and the conversation follows suit,” she says.
Guice takes advantage of the “ability to travel extensively, to meet with a curator
or a collector in their home as opposed to them having to come to you.” Guice took
three artists to an event organized by a museum in Birmingham, Alabama, for col-
lectors and donors, which led to sales and funding for an artist’s next project. “This
client said to me that he had invited gallerists to visit and I was the first one who
had come … and he is a major collector. I was able to establish relationships, real
friendships, that I would never have been able to if I had not been able to travel and
go on that visit.”
Before she closed her physical space, Reed sent work to collectors “on approval,”
and she continues to do so now that she’s showing work online. (Because her gal-
lery was in Ketchum, Idaho, adjacent to the Sun Valley resort, she has a lot of out-
of-town clients anyway.) If a collector wants to buy a work now, she’ll send it to
them and they can send it back, minus shipping costs, if they aren’t satisfied with
the physical object.
Above: Images by Tom Chambers, who is represented by Anne Reed Gallery.
Web sites are also an important part of marketing the work of the artists dealers
represent. Reed, who says she considers herself a gallerist because of the way she
organizes exhibitions on her site, notes clients who couldn’t make it to see a show
in her gallery space in previous years had virtually the same experience her clients
have now: They receive an e-mail notifying them of a new show, and they can view
it on the Anne Reed Gallery Web site.
While they may not curate online exhibitions, each of the dealers we interviewed
for this article maintains a Web site where people can view the work of the artists
they represent.
More Artist And Client FoCus
The work of a private dealer mimics the work of a gallery in many ways: They both
make calls to collectors, network, and try to place an artist’s work in museum or
corporate collections.
“Galleries are all private dealers in a sense,” says Reed. “Just one aspect of a gallery’s function is to work with clients and introduce them to work. As a private dealer it’s probably 90 percent of what you’re doing.”
