Factors that support the architecture of the art market:

• • The style of the art (avant-garde or commercial galleries): avant-garde art galleries are located away from shopping districts, tourist hotspots, or other high-traffic areas. In other words, there is a separation between the art market and the wider economy.  Commercial galleries tend to not steer away from the wider economy in the way the avant garde galleries do.Avant garde galleries are typically minimalist galleries. The gallery spaces are dimly list and are characterized by an “expensive” feel. There is minimal decoration, the absence of furniture, and lighting of the gallery create an atmosphere that reinforces the autonomy of the artwork and displays the fact that it is separate from the noncommercial world of museums and the wider economy.
  • The location of the art. This location, along with the time of relocation of the gallery, is typically a source of prestige within the arts community. Avant garde galleries can typically be found in noncommercialized districts.
    • One art dealer by the name of Paula Cooper as being one of the first dealers on the SoHo scene in the early 1970s and one of the first in Chelsea, NY in the 1990s.
    • The willingness to move is sometimes viewed as adventurous and well-received by artists’ peers, while the resistance to migration of ones art gallery has often been well-received with praise being bestowed upon the stubborn dealer trying to resist the trend in migration.
    • Depending on the nature of the dealer, different outcomes can result from their leadership of the gallery.
      • In running their galleries, these charismatic dealers present themselves as visionaries of the artistic field who are trying to make a name for themselves that will remain for the duration of time. “They say that they do not have an interest in selling what is economically viable in the present, but in what is of artistic importance in the future.” This definition of what is important to the dealer will dictate how they operate the gallery, which includes, where they locate the gallery so that they can make a name for themselves to forever remain in history.
  • The desire to separate art from commerce. This is often reflected through the separation of the front and back rooms of an art gallery.
    • The front room:
      • The front room of the gallery contains, depending on its size, one or more exhibition spaces. These spaces have concrete or wooden floors, bare white walls, no furniture, and bright lights, whose fixtures resemble those of construction sites. This minimal decoration creates the sense of separation and keeps the “commerce at bay”.
      • This type of structure can be found in places like Amsterdam and New York, but also in avant garde galleries located throughout the Western world.
      • Inside the front room, prices of art are usually not elucidated, and cash registers are typically absent.
      • See http://paulacoopergallery.com/ and image below for an example:
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    • The back room:
      • This room is “constructed as a commercial space” and is a region where “art and commerce are juxtaposed physically in architecture of the modern gallery”.
      • In small galleries the back room sometimes consists of only a single room or even a ‘niche’ of the gallery space.
      • In larger galleries, the back room can consist of multiple corridors of space, each with a unique function.  The functions can include an office for directors and dealers, and a private viewing room, furnished with comfortable seats for potential buyers to view art comfortably.
      • “In general, the back room makes visible the permanent information streams which galleries both tap into and contribute to”. There is information about artwork, price lists of previous exhibitions, artists, and more, stored in archives.

Works Cited:

• Velthuis, Olav. Talking Prices: Symbolic Meanings of Prices on the Market for Contemporary Art. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2007. Print.