The art of association: joining forces with other galleries and art dealers strengthens your voice and presence in the community - strategy

Art Business News, Oct, 2002 by Kevin Lo

In recent years, the trend toward drawing public resources away from the arts is growing. To combat this decline and maintain the arts in their areas, many art communities have formed associations. Whether you come together over coffee or over lunch, meet regularly or as needed, an association of galleries or art dealers can incur many benefits.

Six associations--Arts With Aloha, Boston Art Dealers Association (BADA), The Gallery Walk Association of Edmonton, San Francisco Art Dealers Association (SFADA), Scottsdale Gallery Association (SGA) and SistersGalleries.com--are among countless others that have formed successful partnerships in their areas. Together, they've created scholarships, housed visiting shows, encouraged tourism, sponsored lectures and much more. Key members of these groups share their experiences and lend advice on the art of association.

First, cooperation is the most useful tool when forming an association. "I find art dealing to be a lonely business," said Ruth Braunstein, co-president of SFADA. "One good thing about having an association is the commonality between you and the other dealers."

Forming an association can alleviate solitude or, as Charlie Aldinger of Arts With Aloha said, "when you get people together, you can create wonderful synergy and achieve more than you can achieve individually. Having that personal relationship with one another and the professional give and take is nice."

Arthur Dion, president of BADA, said, "I think we all appreciate each other's situations in terms of business and aesthetics. We've given more definition to what contemporary art is."

A large part of creating an association is to advocate the presence of art in a given community. BADA was born from this belief. "We developed ambition to take public positions, and we stated our purpose as two-fold: to foster cooperation among Boston's contemporary art galleries and to create a unified voice of advocacy for contemporary art in Boston," said Dion.

As for the community, Dion added, "We want to address our own community and let everyone in this area who could potentially be interested in contemporary art know we've got fabulous work being done here."

Todd Dow of SistersGalleries.com stated, "It's a great opportunity for the galleries to get together, promote the arts, support the local artists and communities and attract clientele."

A major and rather obvious benefit to forming these alliances is the ability to pool resources. "From a financial perspective, this is an avenue for the galleries to be able to increase their exposure," said Dow. The Gallery Walk of Edmonton received better ad rates as a group, while the SGA comes together and hires a single agency to manage its public relations.

Aldinger said pooling resources is more than financially beneficial; it can also accumulate manpower. "We all had limited resources individually, but when we pooled our resources, we were able to accomplish much more than we would have had we stayed independent."

An increase in business directly due to the formation of an association can be hard to measure, but what can be seen is an increase in audience and prestige. "Our gallery walks get so many people to come out," said Marianne Scott, president of the Gallery Walk Association of Edmonton. "People just getting interested in art might be intimidated by coming into a gallery and being the only person. So they can come and almost feel incognito because there are so many people. I think we increase the comfort level for them, and then they come back. That's what we like to encourage."

Associations can also bring prestige to member galleries and even to the art community. "When you have 10 arts organizations requesting funding for a project, it helps the people who are giving the money see the value or see more value in working with us," said Aldinger.

Braunstein said joining an association can help the reputation of a gallery. "If you see people are members, it has a certain prestige. You, the museum and the collector have a little faith that this is a good gallery, especially if you don't know anything about it."

In fact, joining an association can help a newcomer to an art scene. Dow said, "The galleries that are rather new are looking to established galleries for advice on how best to grab that local customer, make sure that they are aware of the gallery."

In order to have a successful organization, these six associations have some advice.

When a young gallery owner asked Braunstein for tips on starting his own gallery, he suggested "they get themselves together and figure out what they want to do. They have to have some program in mind that would appeal to collectors. Also keep your standards high."

Arts With Aloha took a more laid-back approach. "Two of us had lunch and decided we wanted to get this group together," said Aldinger. "We don't have any bylaws, and we are very grassroots."

SistersGalleries.com created a loose association of galleries by launching an online resource for information about art happenings in the Sisters, Ore., area.