Do you email a gallery cold, or walk in with the work under your arm?
I walked in. Badly, the first time, with a wet canvas and a folder of photographs, and the woman at the desk was very kind about it, which was somehow worse.
The second time I did it properly: called first, asked when was quiet, came back with six photographs and nothing wet. That one turned into a real conversation, and eventually into a show.
I still think a letter is better for some galleries, but I don't trust a gallery that won't let you stand in the room and look.
So which is it for you, cold email or the door? And what actually happened?
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Neither, really. I send a short letter with four or five images and a sentence about why that gallery and not another, and then I wait. No follow-up call, no showing up. If someone answers, the conversation starts already on the right foot. If nobody answers, that is also information.
The door can work, but it depends so much on who sits at the desk that day. I've seen it go well and I've seen it put a gallery off for years, because the person in front of you is not always the person who decides. The one thing I would say against the cold email is that it is easy to send badly: a link to a website and nothing else deserves the silence it gets.
"the conversation starts already on the right foot" is the part i buy and the part i'm suspicious of. letter first means the first thing they know about you is that you can edit yourself, which is great, but it also means the first thing they see is your taste in jpegs, not the actual surface. i've had a painting that photographed like a flat sticker and read completely differently in the room, and no letter fixes that.
that said, "if nobody answers, that is also information" is brutal and correct and i hate it. silence as a review.
The sticker painting, yes. That's the whole problem in one image. A jpeg flattens the surface into a picture of a picture, and if your work lives in the handling, you've just sent them a photograph of something you didn't make.
Which is why my letter never goes alone. Photographs to get me in the door, then the actual thing in the room before anyone decides anything. The letter's job is not to sell the painting, it's to be short enough that they'll agree to see it.
And yes, silence as a review. Brutal. But I'd rather a gallery ignore me than answer with three lines of politeness that mean the same thing.
"If nobody answers, that is also information", I like that, though I'd want to know how long you wait before you believe it. Three weeks? Three months? Because I've known galleries that answer slowly and honestly, and galleries that answer fast and mean nothing by it.
The letter is the civilised option and I won't argue against it. But I'd push back on one thing: the door failing tells you something too, and it tells you faster. When I walked in badly the first time, I learned in four minutes that this was not a room I wanted. A letter would have taken me a month to learn the same thing, if at all.