How to Become a Gallery Owner: What It Takes to Open and Run an Art Gallery

Here’s What an Art Gallery Director Actually Does 51:06

To become a gallery owner, learn how galleries sell before you sign a lease. Then bring a list of collectors, choose a market your art fits, and sign artists on consignment (you hang their paintings and pay them when one sells), usually at a 50/50 split. The collector list matters more than the space.

We run Milan Art’s gallery in Sarasota, Florida, and we teach artists how galleries work from the inside. Everything below is what we’d tell a friend who asked us over coffee about opening one.

How do you become a gallery owner, step by step?

You become a gallery owner by learning the trade, gathering buyers, then opening a space that suits them. Here’s the order we’d follow.

1. Learn the business first. Work in a gallery, or sell your own art through galleries for a few years. You’ll see how a sale really happens.
2. Build a collector list. These are people who buy art and will take your call. A gallery lives on them.
3. Pick your market. Decide who you’re selling to and where they live, shop and vacation.
4. Find a space people can reach. Either a street with foot traffic, or a plan for events that bring people in.
5. Sign your first artists. Most galleries carry 10 to 25 artists, all on consignment.
6. Write a fair consignment agreement. Commission, payment timing, shipping and exclusivity, in writing.
7. Plan for the slow months. Many galleries make most of their sales in one season.

The rest of this guide walks through each one.

What does a gallery owner actually do?

A gallery owner sells art for artists. The gallery holds paintings on consignment, so the artist still owns them until they sell.

The owner’s real customers are collectors. The gallery finds them, hosts them, tells them the story behind each piece and closes the sale. The artists get to stay in the studio and paint.

In a small gallery, the owner may wear every hat. A larger one has a gallery director and at least one art consultant who sells on the floor. You can hear what that director’s job looks like in the video on this page.

How do art galleries make money?

Galleries make money from a commission on each sale, usually 50% of the retail price. That sounds like a lot until you see where it goes.

Here’s what comes out of the gallery’s half:

• Sales commission. An art consultant earns 5 to 10% of each sale, sometimes up to 15%.
• Taxes and card fees. Taken off every transaction.
• Shipping. Often paid by the gallery, especially for returns.

That leaves a gallery working with roughly 20 to 30% of the retail price. On a $4,000 painting, $2,000 goes to the artist and $400 to the consultant. Card fees and shipping take a few hundred more, so the gallery keeps somewhere around $1,000 to $1,200.

Rent comes out of that, and galleries tend to sit downtown where rent is highest. So do marketing, events and salaries.

In some high-rent areas the gallery keeps 60% and the artist gets 40%, but that’s rare. Every gallery owner is always looking for a little more margin, just to cover costs and pay the team. We are too.

What do you need before you open a gallery?

You need a list of collectors before you need a lease. A gallery’s sales come from people who already trust it, and that list takes years to build.

This is why we’re cautious about brand new galleries. Someone who owned a restaurant and decides to open a gallery is usually starting from zero. That’s a hard road.

The new galleries that do well often bring a client list with them. We’ve seen owners come from architecture, interior design, high-end real estate and even law. They already knew a pool of people who buy beautiful things for their homes.

We’ve also seen old galleries with dated websites and cluttered walls sell very well. They represent strong artists because they’ve been in the same spot for decades, with collectors who keep coming back. A long list beats a slick website.

How do you choose a location and a market?

Choose a location people walk past, or a plan to bring them in. Galleries pay downtown rents for foot traffic. A gallery on a side street has to fill its calendar with events instead.

Then choose a market. Every gallery sells to a particular crowd, and the art on the wall has to fit them. In Sarasota, near the beach, paintings with water in them sell well for us. A painting of snowy mountains and skiers belongs somewhere else.

Think about season too. Our busy months run from January to May, when winter visitors arrive with second homes and empty walls. June through December is slower. A new owner who opens in June can spend six months paying rent before the busy season walks through the door.

How do you choose the artists you represent?

Choose artists your collectors will buy from, at prices that make sense on your wall. Good art is the starting line. A gallery shows art it believes will sell.

Every gallery owner does what we call three-second math. You look at a painting and ask, “Can I sell this, here, at this price?” A beautiful buffalo can still be the wrong painting for a beach town, unless the price and the quality make it worth a try.

Here’s what makes us say yes to an artist:

• A cohesive collection. Consistent style and skill across every piece. Paintings in a series make this obvious.
• A range of sizes and prices. With a newer artist, we might take one large piece and a few smaller ones. The large piece often helps sell the smaller ones.
• Price integrity. An artist who keeps prices the same across every gallery is an artist you can trust.
• Stories that travel. A story a consultant can retell without the artist in the room is a story that sells.
• Steady output. An artist painting at least six paintings a month can replace what sells. Ten or twelve is better.
• A history of sales. Twenty, thirty or forty pieces sold already tells you there’s a market.
• Professional presentation. Painted sides, wire on the back, no scuffed corners and no pet hair in the varnish.

Trust your gallery director’s eye here too. Ours has insisted on artists we weren’t sure about, then sold their paintings, because he knows what our collectors want.

What should go in a gallery consignment agreement?

A consignment agreement spells out the commission split, when the artist gets paid, how long paintings stay, who pays shipping and how far exclusivity reaches. Put all of it in writing.

Here’s what’s standard in the galleries we know:

• Split. Usually 50/50.
• Payment. Within 30 days of a sale. Longer than that isn’t reasonable.
• Shipping. The artist ships to the gallery, and the gallery ships back.
• Duration. Give paintings six to twelve months on the wall, so they see a full season.
• Exclusivity. One city is fair. A whole county or state isn’t.
• Online sales. The artist can still sell online. If a painting that hangs in your gallery sells online, the gallery still gets its half.

Never ask artists to pay for wall space or to chip in for your marketing up front. Selling is the gallery’s job, and that’s what the commission pays for.

What kind of gallery should you open?

Most new owners should aim for a commercial mid-market gallery. These sell art from about $1,000 to $25,000, sometimes more for large pieces and sculpture. They curate carefully, represent 10 to 25 artists and do the selling. In our experience it’s the tier that’s grown since the pandemic, and it’s where our own gallery sits.

The other tiers look like this:

• Co-op galleries. Artists share the costs and take turns staffing. A good start for artists, but rarely a business.
• Blue-chip galleries. The famous, top-priced galleries that sell big-name artists. They run on who you know, so they’re very hard to start from scratch.
• Online galleries. Some are free to join and some charge artists a subscription. Check how often their artists actually sell.
• Vanity galleries. They rent wall space to artists and earn money whether the art sells or not.

Please don’t open a vanity gallery. It plays on artists’ wish to see their art on a wall, and it has no reason to sell anything. When a gallery only makes money if its artists do, everyone wants the same thing.

Can an artist become a gallery owner?

Yes, and many good gallery owners started as artists. Working with galleries as an artist is one of the best ways to learn the business. You see how consultants sell, what contracts look like and which galleries treat their artists well.

Once you’re the one paying the rent, the staff and the marketing, that 50% commission stops looking like a lot. You carry the risk, and the artist can always take the paintings back. Artists who understand that make better partners, and so do owners who remember being the artist.

If you’re an artist, start by getting your own paintings into a gallery or two (here’s how). You’ll learn more in a year on that side of the wall than from any book. When you start thinking about buyers, read how art galleries advertise, and sketch the numbers in an artist business plan.

A gallery is a room full of paintings. What makes it a business is the people who walk in and take one home. Find those people first, and the walls, the lights and the artists will have someone to sell to.

Frequently asked questions

Do you need an art degree to become a gallery owner?

No. What a gallery owner needs most is a list of people who buy art, a good eye for what those people will buy, and the business sense to run a shop on a thin margin. Time spent working in a gallery, or selling your own art through galleries, teaches more of that than a classroom.

How do art galleries make money?

Galleries sell art on consignment and keep a commission, usually 50% of the retail price. Out of that half they pay sales consultant commissions of 5 to 15%, taxes, card fees and often shipping, which leaves roughly 20 to 30% of the sale before rent and marketing.

How many artists should a new gallery represent?

Most commercial galleries represent between 10 and 25 artists at a time, depending on the size of the space. Each artist needs enough paintings on the wall, and enough coming from the studio, to replace what sells.

Is owning an art gallery profitable?

It can be, but the margin is thin and the year is uneven. Many galleries make most of their sales in a few busy months, so the owner has to cover rent and staff through the slow ones. A gallery with a long collector list has a far better chance than a new one starting from zero.

Should a gallery charge artists to show their art?

A gallery that charges artists for wall space is a vanity gallery. It makes its money whether the art sells or not, so it has no reason to sell. A commercial gallery earns its commission by selling. Calls for art with an application fee are different, because the fee covers the jurying of a show.