How Small Galleries Are Evolving to Face the Challenges of 2024
Small galleries form the bedrock of the contemporary art world. They play a crucial role in providing access to—and shaping the careers of—emerging artists, and help to provide everyone from potential collectors to institutions with new ways of engaging with art at its most cutting-edge.
Most small galleries are also small businesses, meaning that they find themselves at the forefront of the shifts taking place in both the art market and their local economies. From adapting their programming to managing overhead costs, these galleries are evolving their commercial strategies and redefining their relationships with collectors and artists alike.
Here, we spoke with five galleries participating in Foundations—Artsy’s online fair that spotlights fresh works from tastemaking galleries—about three of the main challenges facing their businesses, and how they are being tackled.
1. Cultivating a strong artist roster
Exterior view of Harlesden High Street. Courtesy of Harlesden High Street.
Small galleries—often embedded in the heart of their local art communities—play a crucial role in finding and incubating emerging talent. Jonny Tanna, co-founder of the London-based alternative art fair Minor Attractions and founder of the buzzy North West London gallery Harlesden High Street, emphasizes that these spaces give collectors direct access to local art scenes.“We have our ears to the streets,” he said, underlining the intimate quality of small galleries. This proximity allows them to spot and nurture new artists before they hit the mainstream. “We know what’s coming up and what’s happening,” he added.
Still, this advantage is coupled with the challenge of standing out in a crowded field. “For any small gallery, making sure that your programming is exciting and finding the right artists and finding something that’s not derivative is a challenge in itself,” he noted. Tanna advocates for a measured approach to gallery management, cautioning against the rush to participate in high-profile events such as fairs. Instead, he encourages a focused commitment to cultivating and nurturing the artist roster.
Exterior view of P21 in Seoul. Courtesy of P21.
Exterior view of P21 in Seoul. Courtesy of P21.
“I advise other gallerists to take their time because everybody wants to squeeze into these fairs, where everybody stands on ceremony, and nobody goes by reputation,” Tanna said. “I built this space to get away from all of that. I built this space to not be part of the art world and just enjoy art. It’s thankfully finally slowly paying off for us….We don’t focus on press. We don’t focus on all sorts of obvious things. We focus on our program and our artists.”
Likewise, Soo Choi, founder of Seoul’s P21, an experimental gallery comprised of two ultramodern glass cube showrooms, builds upon Tanna’s approach, expressing concerns about the tricky balance between sustainable business and growth. The challenge, as Choi notes, lies in scaling up without compromising the gallery’s core values or financial health. “I question how big I want to grow my gallery,” Choi said, noting the challenges of balancing a sustainable budget with a bigger artist roster and a bigger staff.
“Nowadays, that is the biggest question I have,” Choi said. “Whether it makes sense to become bigger and grow the gallery into [a] bigger organization with more staff, more artists, then how sustainable is it going to be? That would mean bigger overhead, but then also would it be possible to manage artists myself?”
2. Rising costs
Portrait of Soo Choi. Courtesy of P21.
Portrait of Karen Foss Becker. Courtesy of Brigade.
Small galleries operate like any small business and resultingly face similar challenges. With rising inflation a global economic theme of the past few years, these local galleries are risking a lot more to host presentations at home and internationally.
Soaring rental prices in major art capitals like New York and London continue to pose a threat to the physical spaces, which was starkly evident in the second half of 2023, when a series of gallery closures rippled through Tribeca in New York. And, according to Artsy’s Art Industry Trends 2023 report, 66% of gallerists who sell a majority of primary-market works reported a rise in prices, either significantly or slightly, with inflation marked as the main factor for doing so.
Another knock-on effect of rising costs is participation in art fairs, which can be a crucial source of meeting new collectors for small galleries. Yet increasing a gallery’s global presence comes with significant overhead costs—and even more risks.
For P21’s Choi, participating in international art fairs is a necessary component for nurturing talent and the gallery itself. However, she admits the increasing difficulty that accompanies these high-risk presentations, especially as galleries face significantly lower returns.
“The biggest challenge is the huge cost of our international art fairs,” Choi said. “I was very lucky to get into major art fairs from very early on, but then I considered it as an obvious investment. But getting into these high-profile art fairs, we are pressured to make impactful presentations, and they are expensive, and they don’t necessarily sell enough at all—if at all—to cover the cost. So, these are huge risks and investments for us.”
These risks are especially prevalent when day-to-day overhead costs continue to increase, spanning from shipping costs to rent prices for the galleries’ brick-and-mortar. Karen Foss Becker, gallery director of Brigade in Copenhagen, emphasizes that balancing this budget is more time-consuming than ever.
“You have to be comfortable with taking risks to be in this business because everything is so uncertain,” Becker said. “Of course, we try to strategize and predict outcomes. However, the business is inherently risky due to high costs and overhead expenses associated with maintaining a physical space. And, when running a gallery with an international roster, we must contend with high shipping costs and other financial complexities that require constant attention and management.”
3. Forging new relationships in a hybrid art world
Interior view of HEIRESS. Photo by Amber Toplisek. Courtesy of HEIRESS.
One prevailing byproduct of the pandemic is the heightened online accessibility across the art world. Buying art online is now a firmly established channel for galleries and collectors. Artsy’s Art Collector Insights 2023 report found that 80% of collectors surveyed had bought art online in the past year, and in Artsy’s Art Industry Trends 2023 report, 51% of galleries said that online collectors are primarily new to their business. Finn Schult, the co-director of HEIRESS in St. Petersburg, Florida, opened his gallery after the pandemic and believes the digital realm helped propel the gallery’s presence across the planet.
“I’d like to think that these relationships today are more able to breach the confines of location than they used to be,” Schult said. “With the help of the digital realm, it’s not uncommon for us to work with artists and collectors that live on the other side of the globe, which is honestly crazy, considering the fact that it wasn’t all that long ago that that type of gallery/client or gallery/artist relationship wasn’t even close to fathomable for a small gallery in Tampa Bay.”
Interior view of Artnutri Gallery. Courtesy of Artnutri Gallery.
However, these online connections are a new territory for most small gallery owners. For instance, Vincent Chen, the owner of Artnutri Gallery in Taichung City, Taiwan, noted that today, small galleries have to leverage social media and online platforms to reach collectors effectively. Chen noted that collectors can buy art far more easily than in years past, so increasing digital strategies has become a crucial way to stay relevant.
“Collectors have more choices; artists also can look for galleries from social media or other art platforms to exhibit their works. For our gallery, we can easily invite artists through email or Instagram,” Chen said. “We don’t need to meet each other face to face.”
Maintaining a balance with the gallery’s physical space is also important. At Copenhagen’s Brigade, which opened in the wake of the pandemic, Becker noted the importance of cultivating a physical space that is open to a broad range of visitors.
“We’ve tried to build a community centered around the physical space of the gallery,” Becker said. “We don’t want it to be just a ‘white cube.’ Instead, we strive to engage people in other ways through our inhouse bookshop and café. Whether it is a student or an art collector who drops in to have a coffee, or to read a book. We’d like to try to break down the barriers to enter our gallery space.”
As small galleries carve out their path, their challenges symbolize the broader shifts within the art market. As gallerists experiment with new digital tools and balance new business models, they continue to serve as vital conduits for emerging talent and new collectors alike.
Header: Gene A’hern, detail of “Sky Painting 34,” 2023. Courtesy of the artist and Brigade.
Correction: Karen Foss Becker was listed as the founder of Brigade. She is the director. Her quotes have been updated to reflect her perspective more accurately.
