Galleries began growing in both number and size in the late seventies, when artists who worked in lofts wanted to exhibit their work in spaces similar to the ones the art was made in.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
There's something pleasing about large, well-lit spaces. I love that dealers are willing to take massive chances in order to give this much room to their artists. Most of all, I love that more galleries showing more art gives more artists a shot.
I used to live in New York, and I know a number of people who have friends who work at galleries. I spent time hanging out with them, going to openings. It was a good way to do research, to hang out and to look at the art that was present.
Lofts were never supposed to be homes. They were vacant old factories and warehouses, taken over by artists looking for cheap space and good light.
If only we could persuade galleries to observe a fallow period in which, for two months every other year, new and old works of art could be sold in back rooms and all main galleries would be devoted to revisiting shows gone by.
Can space break? I mean the space of art galleries. Over the past 100 years, art galleries have gone from looking like Beaux Arts salons to simple storefronts to industrial lofts to the gleaming giant white cubes of Chelsea with their shiny concrete floors.
Well, I'd say that the beginning of this thing came through with Art of This Century, Peggy Guggenheim's, where she opened this gallery and began showing some things that caused a little talk, amongst a lot of other things.
Galleries, and they're all the same, and rightly so, they sell work.
Rumors sound of galleries asking artists for upsized art and more of it. I've heard of photographers asked to print larger to increase the wall power and salability of their work. Everything winds up set to maximum in order to feed the beast.
Galleries needn't be exactly like White Columns purely because times are bad again. But the idea of this special space could - should - help shape what comes next.
There are 65 to 70 photography galleries in New York alone. In the U.K., there are no more than five, and they're all in London.
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