what do you do when a gallery ghosts you after they asked for more work?
ok so I need to know if I handled this wrong. a small gallery near me asked to see more pieces after I sent my initial thing, so I spent like a week photographing and writing out this whole email with detail shots and process notes, sent it, and then... nothing. that was in march. crickets.
my partner says leave it alone and they'll come back if they're interested, my mom says call them (my mom would call the pope if she had a question). I ended up doing nothing except re-checking the sent folder like it was going to change, which felt very dignified.
so what's the move? one polite follow up and then let it die? show up in person with donuts? write it off forever? and tell me your ghosting story too because I want to know how long is normal before it stops being "busy" and starts being "no."
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one follow up, short, no guilt in it. something like "wanted to make sure the files came through, happy to resend" and then you actually close the tab and don't look. march is a long time but small galleries are run by like two people who are also doing installs and bookkeeping, so silence is often just disorganization rather than a verdict. the week of photographing and process notes is the part that stings, i get it, that's real labor and it goes into a void. but sending a second long email mostly signals you're anxious, and they won't read it anyway. your partner's right in spirit, your mom's wrong, calling is how you get put on a list. if they never answer, that's information too.
ok the "close the tab and don't look" part is where you lost me because I have looked at that sent folder maybe forty times and I'm not proud of it lol. but the two-people-doing-installs-and-bookkeeping thing actually helped, like I'd built it up in my head as a verdict and it's probably just someone's inbox being a disaster. sending a short one tomorrow and then I'm closing the tab. for real this time. thank you 🙏
The short follow up is right, and I would send it sooner rather than later. March is long enough that a note now reads as diligence rather than impatience.
One addition, from the other side of the desk: keep a written record of what you sent and when, and if this gallery does come back months from now, do not apologise for the gap or re-explain the delay. Just pick the conversation up where it stopped. I have seen artists talk themselves out of a show by opening with three paragraphs about how long it has been.
And the process notes were not wasted, whatever happens here. That material serves the next enquiry too.