Bad Behavior

I'm tired of bad behavior in the art world. I'm so tired of it that I'm going to start naming names...sort of. Every time I am treated poorly in an art world situation - art fair, gallery, studio - I'm going to write about it here. I won't name the culprit directly. (It isn't my style. I'm too passive-aggressive.) But, I will share some clues.

To balance out the negativity I am also going to start listing good behavior here, naming names directly.

First the bad...

I was introducing some new collectors (friends of my parents) to galleries in Chelsea a few weeks ago when we wandered into a gallery on 26th Street that starts with T and ends with M. I went up to the desk to inquire about one of the paintings in the group show. The woman sitting behind the desk looked directly at me, grunted (maybe it was a moan) and pointed at the painting on the wall. She then turned to her associate and began talking to him, ignoring me and my request for more information. I knew a little about the work, so I spent some time with the collectors sharing what I knew. As I was talking I heard someone bark, "You can't be in there!" I turned to see that one of my friends had wandered into the gallery office to admire a painting on the wall. After being told to leave the office he asked if he could look at the painting. The gallery associate pointed at the office door and said, "Only from there."

State secrets? Nuclear material? Gold bullions? I ask you, what could possibly have been cause for barring a collector from admiring a painting in an empty office?

We left. Everyone felt a little uneasy given that it was the second gallery of many that we planned to visit that day. I was so embarrassed and prayed that we wouldn't run into any more rudeness. It pained me to hear my friend say, "Sorry about that. I'm new at this. I don't know the rules."

[n.b. I use the drawing above by David Rathman only as a visual example of bad behavior. It is a detail from a drawing I own. There is absolutely no connection between this drawing and the gallery that I discuss in this post.]

Comments

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[Patrick Blaine]

Dear Paige,

Thanks for putting up this site. It's nice to know I'm not the only person who is exasperated with the bad behavior in the art world. If no one stands up to these parasitic gallery owners out there they will be able to continue with business as normal.

I recently participated in a show at the Marziart Gallery in Hamburg, Germany and am in the middle of a bad experience with the owner of the gallery. I have a description of what happened and the responses I have gotten to posting my complaint(two from the owner of the gallery). It can be found on my blog at:

http://patrickblaine.blogspot.com/2008/03/marziart-warning-to-other-artists.html

Thank you, Patrick Blaine

[Lanae]

Lovely to see someone standing up and holding spaces accountable for rude behavior. Lucky for me, Seattle is shockingly friendly, but when I visit other cities I am generally exhausted by the effort it takes to learn about any work I see in a gallery.

[Cynthia Flood]

Paige,

Interesting web-site. I am glad to know someone else shares my views on bad behavior in the "art world" lol.

Best,

Cynthia

[Chris]

Okay, wow, now I feel relieved that my poor interactions with gallery associates isn't totally based on my being a black man.

[Linda Mitchell]

Visit Pittsburgh, I have yet to meet a rude person at an art gallery here. We're all sweetarts.

[Paige]

Maybe if you looked at the post a little harder, this blogger would be nicer. The post was written on May 15. I state in the post that I visited Team a few weeks before the post was written. Team may not have a group show up now, but they did in April when I visited.

maybe if you looked at the show harder, the gallery people would be nicer. Team does not have a group show up now.

[Nelly]

Hi ! Your site is very interesting. Thank you.

team has a strong program
BUT that odd-looking species that sits at the desk (she is actually called the gallery director) has really bad karma and will likely result in her timely departure from 26th Street

[serena]

Horrors! Where HAVE the Standards of Civilization gone. Or even basic common sense.

I do agree that if you write about bad behavior, it will consume the vast majority of your time, but then it may also provide an incentive for people to learn some manners, which is all to the good.

At the risk of accumulating bad karma, I will just mention that I myself have been treated so rudely at P.J. on two separate occasions that I have ceased to visit them, and have forwarded all their emails to my 'spam' filter. A dealer is doing his own artists incalculable harm by alienating their public.

[Daniel Cooney]

Paige,

I have trying to get you into my gallery since I opened! I promise to be nice if you ever make it!

Dan

[Paige]

Carol -- thanks for the list of nice galleries. I plan on posting about good experiences, too.

[ml]

Sometimes bad behavior happens accidentally. The first time I took my young dog, normally a very proper creature, to an art show, she took one look at a painting and peed in front of it. I immediately got all of the friends I had come with to run to the bathroom and bring back paper towels. We cleaned it up. Since the dog is too severe a critic, she is not allowed to go into galleries any more.

[Deborah Fisher]

Great post, Paige. Like Carol, I thought it was just that I am an artist. Whatever... I don't see how it's a smart business practice.

Just to stay on the good foot, here are a few galleries in which folks are consistently courteous:

Feature, Inc.
Plus Ultra
Mixed Greens
Freight & Volume
Zach Feuer
303
Pace/Wildenstein
Southfirst
Priska Juschka
Schroeder/Romero

[Paige]

Oh...one more thing I want to add to my previous comment. One way I try to avoid having the artist suffer from lousy gallery behavior is to find out if the artist shows with another - hopefully friendlier - gallery. (Googling sometimes works.) Of course, few artists have multiple galleries, but even if the artist has only been in a group show at another gallery, sometimes that gallery will try to help you - maybe by scheduling a studio visit or putting you in touch with the artist directly. You may still have to deal with the bad behavior gallery when purchasing a work, but at least you can get to know the work a little better in the studio - without the ugliness.

[Eliot]

Go Team!

[Marshall Astor]

At both my gallery and my office visitors wander into "staff" or "office" areas all of the time. Unless they started rifling around on my desk, why should I mind if they are curious? I've found that engaging visitors and giving them a little tour "behind the scenes" is a great way to get to know my visitors.

I go into other galleries and get the stinkeye or worse when I try to peek in the back. Unwarranted gallery pretentiousness isn't exclusive to New York by any means.

[Paige]

Lisa...I haven't noticed a difference in rudeness based on location. Uptown, downtown, in town or out, my feeling is that there are good eggs and bad seeds in all areas of the art world. The key for me is to know where the good attitudes reside and try to support those galleries as much as I can. I also try to avoid galleries in which I've had a negative experience. Someone wrote on a previous post about bad behavior that it is often the artist who suffers when galleries go bad. I couldn't agree more.

The link to the previous post, as some of those comments relate in this case:

http://paigewest.typepad.com/art_addict/2004/04/lamars_deitch_s.
html#comments

[Lisa Hunter]

This may be merely anecdotal, but I've found uptown galleries to be vastly more polite than Chelsea galleries. Do you also notice a geographical propensity towards rudeness?

[carol es]

and here i thought only artists were pooped on. ...ya gotta love nyc. (or not.)

[stereoparty]

For people who need help guessing:
http://chelseaartgalleries.com/26th/

[MAO - Modern Art Obsession]

Wow.. so I thought I was the only collector to be treated rudely and unprofessionally in a Chelsea Gallery!! NOT!!

Great Post Paige!!

But if you're going to write about everytime someone treats you badly in the NYC art gallery world.. you're going to be posting almost everyday! It's so shameful. Good Luck.