Emailed a gallery 6 months ago and still no answer. Do you email or just walk in?

I sent a proper email in March, polite, ten images, no reply at all. Not even a no. Then last week I walked into a small gallery here in Kraków with a folder of pastels under my arm, no appointment, and the woman at the desk actually looked through them. Nothing came of it but she talked to me for twenty minutes, which is twenty more than the email got me.

So now I don't know which way is right. Email feels safe and then it just disappears. Walking in feels rude and also seems to be the only thing that works. My partner says I should stop overthinking it and go in again.

Which one worked for you first, email or walking in cold? And does anyone actually get replies from the emails, or is it only me who hears nothing back? Sorry if this has been asked a hundred times 🙏

6comments

Add your reply to this discussion…

6 comments

Karen Wessel·3w

Honestly I think the walk-in is what did it, not because email is wrong but because the person could see you. Twenty minutes of her actually talking to you is worth more than a stack of images nobody opened, and honestly a small gallery is probably run by two people who are drowning and never get to the inbox.

The one time I brought work in person was to a little co-op type place near me, and the woman behind the desk was lovely and also didn't take anything. But she told me what she actually showed and what she didn't, which nobody would ever have typed out in an email. That part was worth the awkwardness.

I'll be honest though, the folder under the arm thing would take me a while to work up to. Were the pastels yours or a different body of work from the images you sent? Asking because I'm curious if you'd take the same thing in next time or switch it up 🙂

Margaret Hsu·3w

I'd push back on one part of this. The twenty minutes was worth something, I agree, but I don't think it follows that the walk-in is what "did it." She looked at the work because you were standing there and it would have been awkward not to. That is not the same as a gallery taking the work seriously.

What she gave you was information, and that is genuinely rare. But I would be careful about reading a pleasant conversation as the mechanism that gets anyone shown. I have seen people spend years doing the walk-in circuit and collecting exactly those twenty minutes, over and over, with nothing on the wall at the end of it.

The thing worth keeping from both your encounter and the co-op one is the same: somebody told you something true about the work. That is the part to chase. Whether you get it standing in a doorway or through a properly addressed letter to a named person matters far less than whether you get it at all.

Kasia NowakOP·3w

You are probably right and I hate it a little. The awkwardness thing, that has been in my head since you said it, because I know exactly what you mean. She was being kind, and I have decided kind means interested, which are two different words.

But the twenty minutes was not only politeness, I think. She told me which of the pastels she would have put on the wall and which she would not, and why. That is not small talk about the weather. Still, I take the point about the years of twenty minutes. That is the part that scares me, the idea of doing this loop for a decade and collecting nice conversations in a folder.

So what is the alternative, if not the walk-in? You sound like you have watched this from close up. Did anything actually work for the people you saw, or is it mostly just time and luck and being there when a slot opens?

Kasia NowakOP·3w

The co-op woman telling you what she actually showed and what she didn't, that is the part I keep thinking about. Nobody types that. You can't get a sentence like that out of an inbox, it only happens when someone is standing there and feels a bit bad for you looking through your folder.

Mine said something similar, sort of. That my darks were working but the whole thing was too polite. Which hurt a little and also I have redone two of them since.

So I think I go in again. My partner already told me the same and I ignored him, so now I have to pretend it was my idea.

Margaret Hsu·3w

Six months is not a rejection, it is a filing cabinet, and galleries are notorious for them. The email did not fail because email fails, it failed because you sent it to a desk with no face attached to it. That is not your fault, but it is the reality of how these places run.

The walk-in was not rude either. Twenty minutes of conversation is the actual result you were after, and you got it. What you did not get was a sale, which is a different thing and takes far longer than one visit.

The mistake people make is treating these as two competing strategies. They are not. The email is what you send so that when you walk in, there is something to pull up. "I wrote in March, I am the one who sent the pastels" is a much stronger opening than a cold folder. Send the email, then follow it up in person a few weeks later, and do not read silence as an answer.

Your partner is not wrong, for what it is worth. Go in again.

Kasia NowakOP·3w

The filing cabinet line is going to live in my head for a while. I think you are right that I've been treating it as email versus walk-in when it's really more like the email is the introduction and the visit is the actual conversation. That reframing helps, genuinely.

The part that stings is that the twenty minutes felt like the realest thing that's happened since March and it produced nothing I can hold in my hand. But you're right that a sale is a different animal. I keep forgetting galleries don't buy work, they take it on and then hope. Which is a much slower kind of maybe.

Going back in with the same folder is the plan now. My partner will be smug about it.