Commercial Galleries (bricks, Clicks And The Digital Future)

By (author) Little, Henry
Description

Written by a former gallerist with an insider’s perspective, this book provides a timely overview of the commercial-gallery sector at a moment of rapid change and expansion within a booming market. More than any other participant within the art market, galleries are seen as opaque and mysterious actors with a Byzantine code of conduct. This book offers a fascinating view of the gallery ecosystem, presenting a systematic diagnosis of key challenges and opportunities facing the sector today.

Henry Little establishes brand and identity as key concepts for understanding how commercial galleries create value for their artists, and explores how this has become more complex in the hybrid post-pandemic world of physical/digital. Focussing primarily on dealers active in the dominant art market centres - New York, London, Paris and Hong Kong – the book also discusses dealers whose main location falls outside of these centres, including Seoul, Los Angeles, Sao Paul and Cape Town, and covers Old Master dealers alongside galleries operating within the field of Modern and Contemporary art.

Table of contents
Introduction; Chapter 1: Duveen to Castelli to Gagosian: Origins of a Gallery System; Chapter 2: The ‘Space’: Gallery Architecture, Location and Identity; Chapter 3: Digital Presence and Brand Identity; Chapter 4: Tough at the Top: The Gallery Plus; Chapter 5: Mid-Tier Maladies: Innovation and Responses; Chapter 6: Old Masters, New Tricks?; Conclusion; Notes; Further Reading; Acknowledgements; Index
Biographical note
Henry Little is Director of Art Advisory at The Fine Art Group. Until 2017 he was co-director of commercial art gallery Breese Little, which he founded in 2012. He is also a freelance writer, public speaker and lecturer.