Gallery giants tighten their grip
Competition forces smaller dealers to play the branding game—or find alternative models
By Melanie Gerlis
MIAMI. The rise and rise of the mega-gallery—intent on creating a global brand—has never been more obvious than this week at Art Basel Miami Beach. The fair’s floorplan is something of a blueprint for the increasingly hierarchical market, with the best spots in the convention centre given over to dealers such as Barbara Gladstone (H13), David Zwirner (J19), Gagosian Gallery (J13), Pace (C10) and, at the oceanfront entrance, Hauser & Wirth (K17).
“The market now concentrates on the bigger and the bolder. It isn’t just about multiple cities but also multiple sites in the same cities,” says dealer Thaddaeus Ropac (C11), who this year opened a second, larger, space in Salzburg and is soon to do the same in Paris.
At the extreme end of this increasingly competitive environment is the Gagosian Gallery, due to open its 11th space in its eighth city (Hong Kong) early next year. The gallery’s rapid expansion seems to play to today’s cash-rich but time-poor collectors. (Gagosian is rumoured to have sold seven works within the opening hour of the fair on Wednesday.) Other galleries have to play the same game—assuming they can afford to—or are forced to rethink their business models.
So how did art galleries become such big business? For those who believe that art belongs in the luxury goods market, the shift towards big-brand commercialism has been inevitable for some time. Look at the events around South Beach this week: LVMH, Fendi, Absolut and Cartier are all firms who know how to generate success from global marketing. This trend suits buying habits in some of the newer geographic pockets of wealth, many of which are temples to international brands.
The retail analogy is repeated by many dealers. “I would rather be a haute-couture house than a luxury goods provider,” says Xavier Hufkens (C13), who has had one space in Brussels for over 20 years. Adam Sheffer at New York’s Cheim & Read (K8), rumoured to be opening a second space in LA, says: “Some artists prefer a boutique environment, others Walmart.”
Another important driver has been the shift to contemporary art over the past ten years. “The growth of physical space to show art has primarily happened because of the growth of contemporary art,” says Iwan Wirth of Hauser & Wirth, another of this week’s success stories. It recently opened a 15,000 sq. ft second space in London, in addition to galleries in New York and Zurich. “Artists don’t want to wait another two years for a show,” Ropac says. “If we can’t offer them one straight away, someone else will.”
The stakes are also higher now that dealers are facing intense competition from the big-brand auction houses, who regularly host more curated selling exhibitions: “They are opening spaces all over the world, so why shouldn’t the galleries?” says Sheffer. “We’re all on the same team.”
One gallery with an alternative business model is Arndt (B24). Owner Matthias Arndt was in four countries in 2005 (with three spaces in Berlin alone) but now has just one exhibition space, in Berlin. He says that refocusing his business on to a smaller scale has enabled him to “do what I want to do—be a primary market gallerist, rather than spending time meeting with tax advisers in three different countries”.
Hufkens also emphasises the importance of face-to-face contact: “It’s about having one space, one person to talk to, one person a collector or artist can meet with—that’s the only way you can really follow what happens to your work.”
Galleries also need money to expand. Arndt estimates that a gallery would need a turnover of about $100m a year to have five international spaces outside its HQ.
Despite such overheads, the mega-dealers seem to have the upper hand in terms of winning clients, artists and staff from smaller rivals. However, Wirth believes there is a trickle-down effect: “It’s not just that the big are getting bigger, galleries who had two people now have five, those that wouldn’t have opened, now open,” he says. “If Gagosian and Pace can afford to expose their artists to a broader audience then more power to them,” says Sheffer. But he adds: “Since when was Walmart good news for small grocers?”
This article is from: http://www.theartnewspaper.com/articles/Gallery+giants+tighten+their+grip/22112
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