The art market has its ups and downs, but with high fixed costs including rent, salaries, utilities and insurance at big city galleries, a down month with slow or no sales at an art fair booth or gallery exhibition can become a financial catastrophe. Consequently, many gallerists look for “additional revenue streams,” Andrew Schoelkopf, gallerist and former president of the Art Dealers Association of America, told Observer.
Tapping into those additional revenue streams can involve providing a variety of what are typically referred to as client services, such as art advisory, appraisals, auction support and helping collectors find works by artists not represented by the gallery. Yet another stream may come from renting out gallery spaces for events.
Renting out space when a gallery would otherwise be closed has become a growing source of income for owners. “Some galleries we work with make more money from events than from selling art,” said Matt Bendett, co-founder and senior vice-president of Peerspace, an online marketplace that connects people searching for event venues with the owners of those venues. Peerspace works with more than 40,000 spaces around the country—3,000 of which are commercial art galleries. The average art gallery rental rate falls between $100 and $200 per hour, with a three-hour minimum, making them competitive with, and often less expensive than, more traditional event venues that don’t offer the kind of culturally keyed-in ambiance galleries can provide.
Not all galleries that make spaces available for events advertise on listing sites like Peerspace—many can be rented by request but don’t necessarily make their availability widely known. Nor do they limit rentals to special events. The Chase Young Gallery in Boston, for instance, is regularly rented out during off hours for yoga classes, concerts, corporate breakfasts and nonprofit fundraisers. Kate Kostopoulos, director of the gallery, told Observer that the revenue from these and other events covers the rent. Meanwhile, rental revenue........