The Decision to Become a Gallerist (Part 3)

In my last post I told you about becoming the "40 year old intern" at my friend's gallery and discovering that I had more than a passing interest in contemporary art.  In my "intern" duties, I helped Marina look at serious gallery spaces to rent.  But it became apparent that she would need help to pull off such a move.  


Enter Andre.  Andre Rozanoff had been introduced to Marina through a number of mutual friends around this same time.  He's a recent transplant to San Francisco from New York, after moving to California for family reasons.


Andre had also owned an run art gallery in Manhattan on the Upper East Side and was interested in getting back into the gallery business.  The three of us met a number of times, and got along very well.  You do get a feeling for people though, and I definitely had a good feeling about Andre, especially after sharing a few drinks.


So the plan became this:  We would form an LLC with all three of us investing.  My attorney worked magic with the LLC paperwork, even if it cost me $375/hour!


But I was still unsure if this was really what I wanted to do.  It meant saying good-bye to my 6-figure silicon valley salary -- at least for a few years, maybe forever.  It meant cutting back on my household spending.  (No more big gay cruises to the Baltics, although now I can probably expense part of it due to visiting the museums and galleries!  ;-)  


Before I made the final decision, I had a test for myself.  I would go with Marina and Andre to the big Miami art fairs in early December and see how I felt after that.  


Cain Schulte had been accepted to SCOPE Miami, one of the better secondary shows.  (The big one is ART Basel Miami Beach, with satellite shows springing up around that.  There are some good satellite shows, like SCOPE, and some lesser ones.)  The art fair is like a trade show for galleries.  You rent booth space, set up your display, and woo passers-by into the booth to explain the art and get them interested, and hopefully get them to buy a piece or two.


My original plan was to treat it as a vacation with Jordan, spend a few days at SCOPE while visiting the other art fairs and the beach.  Marina's former partner Kit was planning to come from Germany, plus Andre.


But Kit and Jordan each had to cancel due to illness, so I ended up helping to set up the booth, hang the art, and man the booth every day.  I had vowed years ago in high tech to never do booth duty again, but here I was.  And I had a blast!  It was so much fun talking about the art.  We were showing Justin Quinn, who I have written about before.  Justin's art is beautiful by itself, but even more interesting if you know the backstory, so I was busy pulling people in and telling them about the Moby Dick connection.  Some got it, some didn't.  But it was fun.  And people bought it.


Marina, Andre (camera shy), and I worked the booth and we had a very successful show, including follow up sales.  And we made good leads with collectors, so it was very much worth it in the end.


I also took an afternoon to go to the main Art Basel Miami Beach show.  Wow!  Amazing and expensive works were selling!  I asked only a few prices, but was flabbergasted to hear that the ones selling were the expensive ones, not the cheap ones.  (Note to self:  get more expensive art for our gallery.)  I asked about a Calder Mobile.  The answer:  that one was $700,000, but it sold.  The smaller one is $450,000.  The larger one was only about 3' across (1 meter for my non-US friends).  The biggest Calder in another booth (6' or 2 meters), was $4.5 million and was on hold for a collector.

I had my picture taken with a sculpture by Duane Hanson, who makes life-like sculptures of people.  This one was called "High School Student" and cost around $600,000 I think.


Even the smaller SCOPE show had some fun art. There were so many favorites, but the one I kept coming back to was a video piece.  Two gilt-framed video screens, called "Pathetic Clown and Bum Clown" by Marion Peck.  At first glance, they looked like still images, but the were moving -- grimacing and changing their faces in very, very slow motion.  Spooky.  Very John Wayne Gacy.


Anyway, the test was a success.  I loved the art fair.  I felt at home.  I enjoyed talking to the artists, the other gallery owners, the clients and collectors. I had a blast. I was in, and my internship was over.


Next step was figuring out how to actually do it.  More on that in my next post.


Cheers!


Updated May 4, 2010.