Finding and Contacting Art Consultants

This week’s Art Marketing Action newsletter addresses the role of art consultants and corporate art in your career. 

But when and how do you contact them?

You are ready to contact an art consultant when you have a good-sized body of work of consistent quality and style. It’s not so different from approaching a gallery.

Art consultants are in larger cities for the most part. You can find them in your yellow pages under Art / Art Dealers / Art Galleries / etc. (They're listed under Art Galleries in the Denver phone book.) As with everything in your career, start with the ones closest to you before expanding into other markets. Keep in mind, too, that many one-person firms might not advertise in the yellow pages, so you need to be on the lookout for them in newspapers and on the Internet. (Art consultants are often written up in local business news.)

Before you approach art consultants, find out about their clients and their requirements for artist submissions, just as you would do before you sent your stuff off to a gallery.

I cannot attest to the usefulness of them, but have found art consultant mailing lists from Caroll Michels and from ArtNetwork. You can also build your own, qualified list of consultants.

Approach an art consultant as you would a gallery. Start with printed images and/or postcards. Include a resume and statement if they help explain your work. A larger firm would have someone on staff to wade through various submissions before they get to the owner or partners, so your work has to get past several stages of vetting. If they like what they see, they might ask you for slides or visit your website. If they find something they think would work for a client, they will want to see the work in person. It’s a process that takes time to match up your work with clients’ tastes.

Comments

[chris]

My name is Chris and I was just browsing the internet looking for jobs in art. I started to look as these blogs in aart consulting and your blog came up.

The real experience I have is working at an art gallery that for past last three years assisting the owner in sales, and customer assistance. As well as going to the Jacob Javitis center in New York City, and working there for the Art gallery owner selling art work during the art expo show.

I have art history knowledge but I went to school for studio art and graphics. Currently I hold a BFA in graphics and design. Presently I work in a school teaching multiply challenged children and aiding the other teachers in art.

As I have enjoyed Art so much I would love to build on my art knowledge and further my learning in this field. Its so hard to find art consulting jobs I was wondering if you knew of any, or at least where I could look?
Thank you
Chris

[Richard Kraus]

Can anyone supply a list of art consultants that see corporate clients?

[J Richman]

I am interested in finding out if anyone who has experience as an art consultant or worked with one would know how they work with a client-do they charge the client by the hour or get paid commission from the gallery/artist?