The gallery that took 14 months to say "we're going in a different direction"
gallery strung me along for 14 months. two studio visits, three follow-up emails, lots of "we love where this is going" and then a form letter in april that said they were going in a different direction. i almost deleted it but i kept it bc it's kind of a perfect artifact. 14 months of polite nothing compressed into three sentences.
the funny part is i know exactly what happened. they liked the work fine but i don't fit their roster. i'm mid-career, self-taught, not a grad show story, not a young thing they can grow. i'm the "interesting but not for us" shelf. and honestly i respect that more than the vague reasons. just say it.
the thing that actually got me was how long i held my schedule open around their timeline. didn't apply to other shows bc i thought something was brewing. that's the part i'm still a little mad about. nobody tells you that waiting is a real cost, not just wasted time.
anyway. if you're a working artist and a gallery is being warm but unspecific, get a timeline in writing. i wish i had.
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The form letter is such a small object to carry all that weight. I kept mine too, the ones that came after studio visits. There's something almost archaeological about them, you can read the whole relationship in the spacing between sentences.
I get what you mean about not fitting the roster, and I think it's a kind of mercy when they're clear about it, even if the clarity only comes in three sentences after fourteen months. I'd rather be the interesting-but-not-for-us shelf than be the one they take on and quietly never show. At least the shelf is honest.
The work stays, that's the part that matters. It's just a pity they made you wait that long to learn what they'd already decided.
The "quietly never show" part is the real wound, isn't it. Better a clean three sentences than being the painting that hangs in their storage for two years until someone remembers you exist.
Also I want to push back a little on the self-taught thing as a disadvantage. I trained in an atelier so I had the discipline handed to me. You had to find yours alone, which is not nothing. The galleries that matter can tell the difference, even if this one couldn't see past the roster box.
"quietly never show" is exactly it. that's the part that keeps me up. a rejection i can work with, at least it's a verdict. being forgotten is just... nothing.
and you're right about the atelier thing, i've never thought about it that way. i spent years envying people who had someone teach them the rules. never occurred to me that finding my own way meant i had to actually know why i do what i do, not just that someone told me to. seems like a dumb thing to realize in my forties but here we are.
still annoyed about the 14 months though. that part's just bad manners.
"archaeological" is exactly it. you can date them, figure out which one was the good visit and which one was the slow fade. i've got three of them now and they stack like sediment layers.
and yeah, you're right about the mercy part. the worst ones are the ones who never say anything and you just stop hearing back. at least the form letter is closure you can hold. the silence is just... open-ended rot.
glad someone else keeps them. my friends think it's morbid but it's not, it's evidence. proof you showed up and did the work and they still chose the safe thing. i want to remember that part.