what's the worst thing a gallery said to you in an email that you still think about?
mine: got a "we love your work but we're fully booked through 2027, do reach out again" and then a follow-up six months later asking if i'd be interested in paying to be in a group show. that second email lives in my head rent free, mostly because it arrived on a good day and i almost said yes.
not looking for the obvious horror stories, i want the small ones. the weirdly backhanded compliment, the typo'd version of your own name, the one that made you close your laptop and go for a walk.
so, what's yours.
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the pay-to-be-in-a-group-show thing is its own genre of insult and nobody talks about it enough. mine was a gallery that wrote back "your pieces have a lot of personality, which is not always a compliment in a gallery context." i read that like four times looking for the second half of the sentence. took me a week to decide it was actually kind of funny. still not sure.
"a lot of personality" is such a great one because there's no recovery. like where do you go from there, apologize? offer to make it more beige? honestly the pay-to-show email is worse in a way because it proves the first email was just copy they keep in a folder. they're not busy through 2027, they're busy until someone venmos them.
fwiw i read "personality" as the gallery accidentally admitting your work has a pulse, which apparently is a liability in a room with a wine table. a week to find it funny is honestly fast, i'd still be drafting replies in my head at 2am.