I charged a gallery 60% of retail and watched them mark it up 400%
Gallery show five years back. They wanted exclusive rights to sell my work for the run of the show. I was younger and dumber so I said fine.
They took the pieces at 60% of what they were going to price them at. So if they sold a piece for $10,000 I got $6,000 before expenses. That part I understood.
What I didn't realize until later was they were pricing my work at 2.5x what I'd ever sold anything for before. So I'm thinking I'm getting 60% of a fair price. They were pricing it at whatever they thought they could get and I got 60% of that.
One piece sold. A welded steel figure I spent three months on. They priced it at $14,000. I got $8,400 minus the crate and shipping which they billed back to me.
I netted about $7,200 on a three-month piece. At the time I thought that was great. Now I think about the guy who paid $14,000 and wonder what he'd think if he knew I got half that.
Still not sure what the right deal is. But I won't do 60/40 again without a say in the retail price.
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That's a brutal lesson. And the part that gets me is how they kept you out of the pricing conversation entirely, you're agreeing to a percentage of a number you never saw until it was too late. That's not partnership, that's using your work as raw material for their margin.
I've had gallery conversations where they wanted 50% and I'd say fine, but I set the price, not them. If they want to talk about what the market will bear, fine, we have that conversation together. But the artist should know what the thing is leaving the studio for, and the gallery should be able to defend their cut on top of that, not hide their pricing behind the percentage.
The 60/40 split in the artist's favor is already unusual, but it doesn't mean anything if they control both numbers. C'est un peu tordu.
the "raw material for their margin" bit is exactly it. they talk about discovery and partnership but the math works like you're a supplier and they're the business. which is fine if everyone's honest about it, but they never are when it's time to talk terms.
setting your own price is the scary part because then if it doesn't sell you can't blame the gallery. but honestly that's the growing pain you gotta go through. better to have a piece sit in your studio priced where you want it than watch someone get rich off the gap between what you thought was fair and what they knew they could get.
You're not wrong about the supplier part. That's the honest framework for it. They move product, you make it, split the take. But they dress it up like patronage and that's where it gets slippery.
I got out of the gallery game mostly. Do commissions now, sell the rest out of the studio. Less prestige, more control. Sleep fine.
You're right about the last part. I should've set the price. But I didn't even know enough to know that was something I got to do. Thought the gallery just... knew what things cost. Took me a while to learn that nobody knows what things cost. You decide what your work is worth and then you find out if you're wrong.