Hello, world!

My computer science friends will recognize "Hello, world!" as output from the canonical example of how to write a simple computer program.  My Twittering friends might recognize "Hello, world!" as the first Tweet sent by Bill Gates last month from his new Twitter account.  But for me, it is a greeting to my new career, my new colleagues, and my new workaday universe:  the world of contemporary art.  


After 20 years in a technology career that spanned heavy iron database software to the world of dot.com's, from the invention of the mobile web to YouTube and Google, I decided I was ready for a new challenge.  Spending the past year on sabbatical, I spent some time with a friend at her gallery, and realized this was a perfect new field for me.  I buy art.  I look at art.  I talk about art.  Now I will also sell art.  I am now a full time gallerist at Cain Schulte Contemporary Art.  (Web site yet to be updated.  Add that to the to-do list...)

Last week my new partners and I signed a lease for a new gallery space in Union Square. Now we're waiting for the landlord to sign a week later...  251 Post Street has a number of other galleries (and the west coast bureau of my favorite newspaper, the Financial Times).  It's a great location, and is one of the few destinations in San Francisco for art collectors, both local and visiting.


As soon as the landlord signs, the race begins to finalize the build-out plans, flooring, furniture, and everything else necessary to run a gallery and a small business.  We're beefing up infrastructure for inventory and client management, working on the marketing and business plans, as well as the programming for the next 6-9 months.  (n.b., "programming" in this case refers to selecting the art and artists that we plan to represent and display, not the computer-style programming referenced above.  I'm learning a whole new vocabulary, and you will too, if you keep reading my blog!)


Over the next few weeks I'll introduce my new partners and artists, and discuss our travails and successes (hopefully more successes than set-backs) in physically moving from a temporary space in the Mission to the big league that is Union Square.


Cheers!


Updated May 4, 2010.