Pricing your art and maintaining consistent relationships with galleries can be challenging. It’s crucial to find a balance that respects your work’s value while accommodating gallery preferences.
One common situation is when a gallery requests a price reduction to try to increase sales. While it’s tempting to comply to maintain the relationship, consider the long-term implications. Lowering your prices too much can undervalue your work and set a precedent that’s hard to break. Minor adjustments to pricing rarely make a significant difference in sales. More often, the issue is that the gallery isn’t attracting the right buyers for your work.
It’s better to seek new gallery relationships that appreciate and can sustain your desired price point. While it might feel safer to stick with a gallery that offers representation, even at a reduced rate, diversifying your gallery portfolio is often a more strategic move. Look for venues that understand and value your work’s worth.
In cases where a gallery wants to experiment with pricing, consider allowing them to do so while simultaneously exploring other galleries. This dual approach can protect your overall pricing strategy and ensure you aren’t overly reliant on one gallery’s sales.
Remember, it’s essential to maintain a network of galleries that support your pricing and value your work appropriately. Consistency in pricing across all galleries is key to establishing and maintaining your reputation as an artist.
I’d love to hear about your experiences with pricing and gallery relationships. Have you faced similar challenges? How did you handle them? Please share your stories and questions in the comments below.
I am a 69 year old sculptor – painter, and have been working as a full time artist for 40 years. My painting sales have kept me going all this time but my painting gallery people have now mostly retired. To keep myself in galleries , I’ve been making fish sculptures, coppered at first, but now painted in oils..I consider them to now to be three- dimensional paintings, they take so much more time , I use Williamsburg paints..I am accepting less than I put into them, just to say that I’m in this prestigious gallery . It seems age has pushed me into a corner.
As an artist myself and a very long-time art dealer, I have a couple of thoughts on this issue.
1. How much experience at pricing your art do you actually have? And has your pricing structure resulted in numerous sales? If you are a beginner, then perhaps the gallery has more insight into your “correct” pricing (or at least what will truly produce a marketable product, hence sales) than you do.
2. If you are comfortable with your pricing based on marketplace results, then the gallery’s request must be considered as a matter of their inability to market your art in some way: wrong gallery to begin with, bad geographic area, inadquate placement, no advertising, etc. In this case, I would say that it is time for a “come to Jesus” meeting with the gallery in order to discuss their reasoning behind the request, and so you can inquire into these areas and see if the request really means that the gallery is a bad “fit” for your art. Do not be reluctant to discuss these matters with the gallery. And if THEY are reluctant, consider it a red flag.
3.I usually agree with Jason, but in this instance I do not. I believe that prices of an artist’s work should be the same no matter where they are sold. Otherwise, your collectors have every right to get upset and the consequences can be very bad. So I would not go along with allowing the gallery to “experiment with pricing.” The art world has always been small, and it’s even smaller today. The ONLY way this can work is if the gallery wants to set up some kind of gimmick-reason for a temporary reduction (and galleries do this often, it’s not a big deal), like celebrating some kind of holiday, or event and reducing for a 30 day period for that. With a reason/excuse, your collectors won’t get pissed-off, and both the gallery and you will get to see what a price change does..
However, if the lower prices DO work, and you decide to go that route with this gallery, then you MUST change your prices to the same level everywhere your work is marketed – other galleries, your website – everywhere. Art is about perception, And your art must always be perceived to have the same value, not some erratic b.s. thing that varies.
I somehow recall that if the gallery wants to reduce a price, then the reduction comes entirely from their commission .