What's the worst red flag you ignored because the gallery was a step up?

I'll go first and it's not flattering.

A small space in a city I won't name asked me for a "contribution to the printing costs" of the show. Not framing, not shipping. Printing costs. Of my own work. I paid it, because the space had a name I could put on a CV and I was twenty-nine and hungry to look serious.

The show was fine. The invoice is the thing I remember.

What did you talk yourself into? The contract with the vague clause, the "we usually handle sales ourselves," the director who never answered one email until the week they needed something. I'm collecting red flags I should have caught earlier, and I'd rather hear yours than pretend I've got better instincts now.

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Inês Costa·5d

Mine was quieter than an invoice. A space wanted my prints already mounted, ready to hang, and they would take care of the rest. It sounded like trust. What it actually meant was that I paid for the framing, the mount, the transport, and the risk, and they paid for opening the door. When nothing sold I had a stack of blue boards in my hallway for two years, and no one to be annoyed at except myself.

The printing costs one is worse though, I'll give you that. Paying for the privilege of showing your own work is a strange arithmetic and the hunger makes it look reasonable.

Giulia BrunoOP·5d

"They paid for opening the door" is going straight into my vocabulary, thank you. And the boards in the hallway hurt more than the invoice honestly, because the invoice at least is a number you can be indignant about. Framing you paid for is just sitting there, being furniture.

Odd thing is the mounted-and-ready request is almost more sinister for how reasonable it sounds. Nobody asks you to pay for anything, they ask you to be prepared. Which is what you'd tell yourself anyway.

Roman Petrak·5d

The mounted and ready to hang part is the tell. That's not trust, that's them shifting the whole fabrication burden onto you and calling it a compliment. A gallery that can't hang a show doesn't have a staff, and a gallery without staff doesn't sell.

I've been on the making side of this with steel pieces. Delivered finished, crated, insured, paid for all of it, and it sat in their back room for a season. The lesson was mine to learn: ask who's paying for return shipping before you agree to anything. Nobody ever offers.

Camille Laurent·5d

The invoice being the thing you remember is exactly right. The show fades, the money you shouldn't have paid stays sharp.

Mine was a space where the director "handled sales personally" and was never quite able to produce a statement afterward. Two pieces sold, I heard about it from a friend who saw them on someone's wall, and I never saw a number on paper. I was so pleased to be in the room that I didn't ask for anything in writing. That is the whole red flag, really: not the vague clause itself but the fact that I was too flattered to read it slowly.

The vague contract is one thing. The one I'd add is a gallery that won't tell you who else they show or let you see the actual space before you commit. If they're cagey about the room, the room is the problem.

Giulia BrunoOP·5d

"Too flattered to read it slowly" is the line, isn't it. That's the mechanism more than the contract. Two pieces on someone's wall and no number on paper, I would still be angry about that, years later.

In a way I prefer the invoice to the vanishing statement. My red flag at least had a price attached. The other kind you only discover after the fact, when there is nothing left to refuse.