Inside a Contemporary Gallery: Dealer, Show, Label

Reading note

An art dealer spends most days on the telephone, in the stockroom and at a desk, not in the viewing room. The visible hour of a private view is the smallest part of the job. The rest is correspondence with collectors, condition checks, framing, transport, insurance, photography, and the slow work of placing a work with the right owner.

What does an art dealer do all day?

A dealer's day divides roughly into three kinds of work: looking after the works already in hand, looking after the people who might buy them, and looking after the paperwork that makes both possible.

On the first count, a gallery holds stock. That stock needs condition reports, photography, framing decisions, storage in a climate that will not warp a canvas or bloom a print, and a record of where each piece is at any given moment. A work may be on the wall, in a crate, at a restorer's, on approval with a collector, or in a fair booth in another country. Keeping that straight is a daily discipline, and it is usually the dealer or a close colleague who does it.

On the second count, the dealer writes and calls. Collectors are not a mailing list but a set of relationships, each with its own history, taste and budget. A dealer may spend a morning sending a single image to a single person, with a paragraph explaining why this particular work belongs with that particular collection. Museums, curators, advisors and other dealers form a second ring of contacts, and much of the trade runs through them.

On the third count, there is the unglamorous machinery: invoices, loan agreements, consignment terms, export licences where they apply, and the certificates and provenance documents that travel with a work. On the primary market, where a gallery represents an artist directly, the dealer also agrees prices with the artist and holds them steady across buyers. That steadiness is part of the service. A collector who buys at a gallery is buying into an orderly market, not a scramble.

For readers who want a French-language account of this trade from the visitor's side of the desk, the guide Le Trésor on gallery practice sets out the dealer's role, the mounting of exhibitions and the reading of labels in plain terms, aimed at people who look at galleries from the outside rather than work inside them.

How is a gallery exhibition mounted?

An exhibition is a sequence of decisions, most of them made months before anything is hung.

The first is the proposal. A gallery and an artist agree on a body of work, a date and a shape: a solo show, a two-person pairing, a themed group. The date is fixed early because the calendar drives everything else, including which collectors and curators will be in town that week.

The second is the selection. Not every finished work goes in. The dealer and the artist look at what exists, what will be ready, and what the space can carry. A gallery with three rooms may want a different temperature in each. Works may be held back for a fair, or kept for a later show.

The third is production and logistics. Frames are made or changed, crates are built, insurance is arranged, and a photographer records each work before it leaves the studio. A checklist is drawn up: dimensions, medium, year, edition where relevant, and the exact wording the artist wants used.

The fourth is the hang. This is where the exhibition is actually written. The person hanging the show, often the dealer with the artist, decides sight lines, spacing, height and sequence. A wall label is placed beside each work. Lighting is adjusted, sometimes over two days, because a canvas that looks flat under one beam comes alive under another. The hang is not decoration. It is the argument of the show, made in space.

The fifth is the opening and the weeks after. A private view is a working evening, not a party. The dealer is watching who stops in front of what, which conversations last, and which works need a second look from a particular visitor. After the opening comes the quieter period when sales are discussed, loans are negotiated, and reviews and institutional visits are arranged.

How do you read a wall label in a contemporary gallery?

A wall label, sometimes called a cartel, is a small document with a fixed order of information. Read it in that order and it will tell you most of what you need.

Start with the name of the artist. Then the title of the work, usually in italics or quotation marks, exactly as the artist gave it. Then the year. Then the medium and the support: oil on canvas, gelatin silver print, bronze, single-channel video, mixed media on paper. Then the dimensions, given in centimetres and sometimes also in inches, height before width before depth. Then, where it applies, the edition: for a photograph or a print, you may see something like 3 of 5 plus 2 artist's proofs, which means this is the third impression in a run of five, with two further impressions reserved for the artist.

Two further lines often appear. One is the credit line: the name of the lender, the collection, or the gallery, preceded by words such as courtesy of or collection of. The other is a copyright or courtesy notice naming the studio or the rights holder. Neither tells you what the work costs. Prices are rarely on a wall label in a commercial gallery, and are given on request.

A label is not a caption for a photograph. It is a legal and scholarly summary, and its omissions are as informative as its contents. If the medium line says artist's proof, the work is not from the numbered edition. If the credit line names a private collection, the work is on loan and is not for sale. If the date is followed by a range, the work was made over time.

What does an artist's proof or a certificate mean?

These terms appear on labels and in sales documents, and they are often confused.

An edition is a fixed number of impressions taken from a plate, block, stone or file, after which the matrix is normally cancelled or the file retired. The number in the edition is agreed in advance with the artist. An artist's proof is an impression outside the numbered edition, traditionally reserved for the artist, and it is usually marked AP or EA. It is not a lesser object, but it is a different one, and it is priced and catalogued accordingly.

A certificate is a document, usually signed by the artist or the estate, that identifies a work and confirms its place in an edition. For photographs and prints it often states the edition size, the number of the impression and the date of printing. For unique works, the equivalent is a certificate of authenticity or a signed invoice with full details. Keep both. They are the work's paper memory, and they matter when a piece changes hands.

Why does the Marais matter to gallery visitors?

In Paris, the Marais has been the densest quarter for contemporary galleries for decades, and its streets reward walking rather than planning. Galleries cluster, which means a visitor can see six or seven shows in an afternoon without crossing the river. Opening nights tend to fall on the same evenings, so a single walk can carry you through several rooms.

A gallery that closes is not always a failure. Some dealers move to larger premises, some merge, some shift to fairs and private sales, and some simply stop. The address changes; the relationships often do not. A visitor who follows a dealer rather than a street will find the thread continues.

A note on looking

None of this replaces looking. The label tells you what a thing is; the hang tells you what the gallery thinks it means; the dealer's day is spent making both possible. A visitor who reads the label carefully, then stands back and looks again, is already doing the work the room was built for.

Gallery practice has an older counterpart on a wall rather than a stretcher, and a nineteenth-century fresco read closely sets out how a wall painting is read in place.

Sources: tate.org.uk.