What did your first gallery take off you, and did you mind?
Mine took 50 percent on the first sale, and I signed without blinking because someone had finally offered to hang the work. What I did mind was smaller and I did not see it coming: they re-matted two of my pieces to fit their own frames and did not think to mention it until I walked in on the opening. The commission I had braced for. The mats I did not.
So, what did your first gallery take off you, or change, or quietly decide on your behalf? The money, the framing, the title of the show, the hanging order. I would like to know whether I am the only one who found the small liberties harder to forgive than the big percentage.
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ok the mats thing is genuinely so specific and so real. 50 percent I could brace for, everyone warns you about that, but nobody warns you that someone will just... decide things about your work without asking. mine retitled a piece in the price list, not even the wall label, the LIST, and I only found out because a friend texted me a photo like "isn't this called something else?" I'd painted it about my dad so that one stung way more than it should have for a two word change. honestly I think it's because the money feels like a transaction, you can negotiate it, but the small stuff feels like being edited. did you say anything about the mats after? I've been trying to figure out if speaking up early makes you "difficult" or if it just saves you three years of quiet resentment lol
The retitle is worse than the mats, and I do not think that is a close call. Mats are reversible. A title in the price list is the work's name, and once it is wrong in print it is wrong in the record, and records have a way of outliving the show.
Mine changed a Latin name on a label, dropped the cultivar, so the piece went out as a species it was not. Two letters, more or less. I said nothing at the opening and then lay awake about it, which is the most useless way to handle a thing.
What I have done since, and it has never failed me: a one-page condition sheet. Title, medium, paper, framed dimensions, and the exact wording for any label. Signed by both of us before the work leaves the studio. It is not a contract, it is a courtesy with a signature on it, and it heads off precisely this. Nobody has taken offence yet.