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

[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.

[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

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[north pacific costa rica beach]

I am trying to find the name of the artist who did the cover art for
the 1987 (also 1991..http://members.tripod.com/~v_m_smith/91scf.htm)
version of "Stranger in a Strange Land" by Robert A. Heinlein...for
some reason I can't find this info (but I don't own
the book). MOST IMPORTANTLY I want to know how to get a print of it,
in any form possible. THANKS!!...

[orexis online]

the four major components of the Arts and Humanities are visual art, music, dance, and drama/theatre. Explain how all four art forms (visual art, music, dance, drama/theatre) are used in a Broadway musical to produce a unified experience