The market for fine art is ever-evolving and while most news about the gallery field focuses on blue chip outposts in major cosmopolitan centers the vast majority of working artists operate within their own regional communities dotted around the United States. The average artist will never see their work acquired by a museum, will not receive an institutional retrospective, and likely will struggle to find robust gallery representation. At the same time, the demands on retail gallery owners in smaller cities are constantly increasing. Rents, and the other myriad expenses associated with small business, are ever on the rise, while the pool of individuals interested in buying art remains relatively static. Looking towards the future for artists with regional scopes, one bright spot might be artist-run cooperatives that bring together makers around the idea of shared benefits.
Many communities around the country are home to long standing cooperative galleries. In the northeast, a number of these organizations count their longevity by the decade. The ways in which artists’ cooperative galleries operate can vary wildly, but the core tenants usually fall somewhere along the lines of a group of artists joining together to pay rent on a storefront where they all can show their work. Often, each participating artist is granted a section of the space where they can continually share a rotating body of artworks. Sometimes, the exhibition opportunities cycle between active members. Typically, each member of a cooperative is expected or obligated to donate several hours a month to monitor the gallery and greet guests, while in return the gallery takes a smaller than usual commission when works sell. There are some trade offs involved.
Whereas a traditional commercial gallery is (at least ideally) managed by a fine art professional who has both curatorial acumen as well as sales and networking ability, a cooperative might be run collectively by dozens of artists, each with their own goals and objectives. While gallerists will take a 50% commission on average though, the typical commission in a cooperative is something like 25%. Artists in a cooperative gallery can expect to also pay membership dues that can range from a few hundred dollars a year to hundreds of dollars a month, with some cooperatives instituting sliding scales or varying membership tiers to make dues more equitable and accessible.
The demands on small galleries, whether cooperative or owner-run, are huge. Each month a gallery needs to sell enough art to pay rent, utilities, insurance, marketing fees, and other incidentals like paint, labels, collateral materials, and reception expenses. For a retail gallery, the added expense of staff salaries and health insurance can prove insurmountable. In a cooperative, the necessity for profit is spread broadly across the artists involved and there is often no gallery manager to pay. While the panache and expertise of a career gallerist can provide a high level of value to artists represented by them, the freedom and flexibility of a cooperative has a value of its own, particularly for artists who feel overlooked by the gallery system.
Artists are constantly seeking new venues to show and sell their work. The pressures on small owner-run galleries are fierce and the need for gallerists to show works that are highly salable is very real. So for many artists, the alternative of being in community with fellow makers while having a more equitable stake in a gallery operation might be an appealing alternative to the grind of seeking gallery representation and answering to the whims of the marketplace. As the field for regional galleries continues to change, cooperative galleries have enormous potential to create dynamic spaces for artists of all backgrounds to exhibit their work within and beyond their communities.