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The Life of a Gallery Owner

Tuesday September 20th, 2016

In the first of a new series of articles by guest columnists, Craig Thomas writes about his experience of opening and running a gallery in Ho Chi Minh City.

When I first decided to open my own art gallery in Saigon in 2009, I thought I had a pretty good idea of what I was getting into. After jettisoning my 10-year career as a lawyer, I had managed a friend’s gallery for several years, found a few new artists and sold my fair share of paintings. I was not an art history major but I had spent a lot of time hanging around in museums. How difficult could it really be?

I have since learnt that the job of a gallerist is both more challenging and more rewarding than I could have imagined. On its worst day it is better than a day spent poring over legal documents. There is no textbook or roadmap for how to build a gallery. Instead, it involves a process of intuitive improvisation that never really ends.

Not For the Sake of It

 A commercial art gallery is, by necessity, first and foremost a business. It is a difficult business to quantify, however, dealing as much in intangible notions like creativity, inspiration, trust and intimacy as it does in dollars and cents. Art must be sold to support the gallery and the artists, but success cannot be measured just by profits. Striking that balance between showing what you feel is quality, compelling work, and the demands of running a profitable business is the gallery director’s foremost challenge.

 While I had some concept of the commercial side of a gallery, I began largely ignorant of the curatorial side. I did not really know what a curator did until I hired one. When I did, she awakened me to the value of things like well-researched curatorial essays, professionally prepared catalogues and properly distributed press releases. Perhaps most importantly, she helped me understand that there is an unwritten code of conduct that professional galleries abide by when dealing with artists, with each other, and with collectors. These rules are the backbone of the gallery system. Abiding by them gives a gallery the credibility that is essential for its long-term success.

 As a gallery begins to operate, organising exhibitions and adding artists, the bulk of the focus takes a strong turn from the commercial to the curatorial. Galleries are essential because they do the work and take the risks that others do not. They scout for new artists, make the studio visits, ask the questions, curate the exhibitions, pay the bills, and do all the other things to help put artists in context and best flatter their work. While the internet and social media is changing the way art is introduced and projected, the physical gallery space remains the best location for new art to be shown. The professional gallery offers continuity to artists and collectors, and is a guarantee of quality and authenticity.

Multi-Faceted

 Like any small business owner, the director of a small or boutique gallery has to wear a lot of hats. One minute you are the delivery man and the next you are a psychiatrist commiserating with a discouraged artist. Perhaps the hardest thing is shifting from art mode to sales mode. There are natural sales people, but I do not think you find many of them working at art galleries. The hard sale might work in some industries but it feels wrong when selling art. You want to help someone find a piece of art they love, not convince them to buy something they might later regret.

 Unlike dealers, galleries work with a finite number of artists over years and sometimes decades. The luxury of this long association allows you to often form deeply personal relationships with the artists you work with. You have to let them know you believe in them and they have to believe in you. There will always be disagreements, and both artists and gallerists can sometimes be difficult people to deal with. But the reservoir of goodwill and trust built over the years helps you get past these moments.

 The stereotype of the predatory gallery exploiting unwitting artists seems to me the exception rather than the rule. In my experience, most successful galleries are as much passion projects as they are cold-eyed business propositions. A good gallery’s success should be inextricably tied to the success — artistic and financial — of the artists it works with. Their success is the best measure of your own.

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The Local Challenge

 Operating in the arts in Vietnam carries with it unique challenges. You have to learn to navigate the waters of what is acceptable content in this particular socio-political environment. The country’s basic art infrastructure and institutions are less than sufficient. We need fine arts museums that have the institutional credibility and technical capacity to attract travelling international exhibitions. The country’s fine arts universities need more resources so that they can teach more than the basics, and better help their students prepare for careers as professional artists. Greater unity is needed in the already modest domestic art scene and market, which is currently split between the two artistic poles of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. Crucially from a gallery perspective, Vietnamese contemporary art is still waiting for the rise of a class of local Vietnamese collectors necessary to help it achieve its real potential.

 In spite of these obstacles, there is much to be excited about in Vietnamese contemporary art. There is a new generation of artists who have been exposed to the wider art world via the internet and international travel, and who are exploring new mediums and forms of expression. They are working steadily to chronicle the great changes to their country and society of the past two decades. Communicating in a visual language accessible to all, many are addressing social and political issues that cannot currently be expressed in writing.

 The good news for would-be collectors is that when compared even to other ASEAN countries, contemporary Vietnamese art remains modestly priced. While the most commercially successful artists’ works may sell for above US$10,000 (VND215 million), it is still possible to find great pieces by up-and-coming artists in the US$2,000 to US$5,000 range (VND43 million to VND108 million). Galleries and artists are cognizant of the difficult economic times and many are willing to be flexible in ways like allowing buyers to pay over a number of months.

 Not So Fast

 A word of caution, though. Anyone considering opening an art gallery should steel themselves for a certain amount of disappointment. You will learn to dread the words: “Let me just check with my husband/wife and get back to you.” Any criticism of your artists’ work will feel like a dagger in your own heart. There will be some sleepless nights and lots of repetitive checking of your email in hopes that sale you have been waiting on will have been confirmed.

 When it all comes together, having a gallery can be a glorious thing. The feeling that you have in some small way helped a talented person to reach their creative potential is nonpareil. There is the frequent chance to be enchanted by a new piece of work that you see on a studio visit to a young artist you just met. There are those wonderful moments when you call an artist to tell her that one of her pieces has just been sold. Or just sitting alone in the gallery with a freshly hung exhibition. These are perks that beat racking up billable hours in a law office any day of the week.

 Craig Thomas Gallery will open a second gallery at 165 Calmette, Q1, HCMC in early December 2015. Hope, a solo exhibition by artist Pham Huy Thong, will open at the Calmette space on Dec. 11 and continue until Jan. 10

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source : wordvietnam.com