How art galleries make money


The reason any business exists is to make money or achieve an impact in the society. A painting business definitely falls in the latter category where the main reason for existence is to make money. However, if you are planning to start a gallery, you are probably wondering how you will be making money. Many people wonder how art galleries make money. The answer is simple, through multiple methods some of which I am going to look at in this article. Maybe when you understand how art galleries make money, you can be motivated to open your own too and make some money off of it.

Sales commission
Sales commission is the main source of income for most galleries around the world. A gallery is simply a collection of artwork from various artists. How galleries work is that an artist creates their own piece of art which they take to a gallery to be displayed to member of the public. Thus, people walk into the gallery and see works by different artists. The gallery is only responsible for displaying the works of art and ensuring that they are safe from damage and theft. They are also responsible for making the sale of the artwork to customers who are interested.

When the sale is made to a client and the transaction has been concluded, the gallery is entitled to a percentage of the amount obtained from the sale. This percentage usually varies from as little as 10% to as high 70%. There are several factors that determine how much commission the gallery takes. Some of these factors include level of service offered by the gallery, gallery’s expenses, and how reputable both the artist and the gallery are.

Some galleries usually charge artists an exhibition fee, which means that they take a lower commission in return. In other cases, the artist doesn’t pay anything upfront, but is charged a higher commission when the artwork is finally sold.

Exhibition fees
Like we have seen above, there are some galleries that charge their clients an exhibition fee upfront. That means that every time there is an exhibition at the gallery, the artist has to pay a fee to cover the expenses involved such as security, workers, and insurance just to mention a few. Sharing the cost helps to share the risk involved in exhibiting artwork between the artist and the gallery owner.

Not charging an exhibition fee is not the best business structure if your gallery doesn’t make good sales from the exhibitions you carry out. Charging an exhibition fee ensures that the gallery has fixed income and doesn’t depend on sales alone.

Events
Galleries also host events such as a book launch and fundraiser. In order to host your event inside a gallery, you have to pay the gallery ownership a certain fee, which contributes to their income. Sometimes galleries host free events as a marketing strategy for their own services. Thus, the publicity that the events bring lead to increased sales in the near future.

You can work with paint with numbers to produce good pet paintings that you can take to a gallery and make some money when it is sold.