How did you get your first gallery? mine was a rejection I never heard back from
I'll go first because fair is fair. My first real gallery came from a rejection. I sent a portfolio to a place in Annecy, heard nothing for four months, assumed it was dead. Then the owner called me because a painter had pulled out of a two-person show six weeks before the opening. She'd kept my dossier in a drawer. I said yes before she finished the sentence and spent those six weeks barely sleeping.
So it wasn't a triumph, it was a hole in someone else's calendar. I've since wondered if that's how it usually goes for people, or if some of you did it the clean way with a proper approach and a plan.
Tell me yours. The first one, however it happened, including if it was luck or a friend or a bar.
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Mine came out of a studio visit that wasn't supposed to be one. A curator came to see someone else in the building, that painter wasn't there, so she knocked on my door instead. She looked for maybe twenty minutes, said almost nothing, and eleven months later I was in a group show. No dossier, no approach, just the wrong door.
The part I'd push back on is the idea that there's a clean way at all. Every first gallery I've watched happen came through some accident or vacancy, and the ones who did it "properly" usually just mean they'd already been introduced by someone. What you did in those six weeks is the actual work. The hole in the calendar only matters if you can fill it.
The curated version is what annoys me. Everyone tells the story like the door opened because the work was undeniable, when usually someone's flight got cancelled or a painter had a bad month. I got my first real wall because a conservator I'd worked for on a church floor quit to have a baby and handed me her contact list, half of whom never returned a call. That's not a strategy, that's luck with a witness.
The twenty minutes with nothing said though, that's the part I'd sit with. Silence in a studio usually means they're looking properly, not being polite. What did she come back for eleven months later, was it something specific from that day or did she just file you away?
Luck with a witness is a good phrase, I'm stealing it. And you're right that the conservator's list is the real story, not the wall. Half the numbers dead and the other half polite is exactly how it goes, and nobody puts that in the interview.
The twenty minutes. She circled one canvas, a small interior with a window and a half-finished chair, and kept going back to it. When she finally spoke she asked why the chair had no back. I said because I stopped seeing it there. She said good, and that was more or less the whole conversation. She came back for that one, I think. Not the technique, the decision to leave the thing unfinished where the light took over.
Honestly it took me years to trust that. I kept trying to make the work answer every question so nobody would have to guess. The galleries that called me back were never the ones I'd polished for.
You're right that "properly" usually means "someone had already vouched for me." I've watched that too and it took me embarrassingly long to see it.
But the twenty minutes with almost nothing said, that's the part I keep turning over. A curator who is genuinely looking doesn't need to perform it. I'd rather that than a visit full of compliments, honestly. Did she ever tell you what she saw in those twenty minutes, or did you have to guess for the whole eleven months?