In 2018 José Freire of Team Gallery announced through Artnet that he was “quitting art fairs” citing the corporatization of the art world. Degrowth, as it has been proposed to western markets and production is a clear plan, it’s the psychology that cripples its application in a growth-based society. 

Over the past year multiple significant New York galleries that have been in business for over 10 years have announced closures. These announcements come via social media as clients, dealers, and artists all take part in adding a “thank you”, broken heart emoji, or a preemptive “looking forward to the next chapter”. 

As commercial rents, operational, and logistical costs rose post-pandemic, art sales started to slow falling by 4% year-on-year¹ beginning in 2023, reducing total global sales to $65 billion. During this time collectors increasingly demanded larger discounts beyond the typical 10% to 15% baseline. Meanwhile, galleries, beholden by the need to maintain street-level leases in high-cost areas with rising rates, were compelled to continue participating in several annual global art fairs.

Further complicating the picture is the flattening of financial returns on art fair investment, conjoined with an uncertain global market given a record-breaking number of elections taking place globally, (around 50 countries holding elections in 2024 alone), the expansion of political volatility in several parts of the globe, and its associated economic challenges. Also impactful is the amplified power of mega-galleries and their bottomless resources to consolidate artists, dealers (from defunct galleries with deep artist and client contacts), dominating the marketplace in ways that do not allow for competition. 

As many emerging or mid-tier dealers do not amass incredible wealth from selling on the primary market, given the conditions outlined above, these recent closures are a result of a compounded effect of the extravagant financial pressures of starting and maintaining a gallery when coupled with a declining market, rising operational costs, and the continued corporatization of the art world. As I write this, Art Basel has announced The Art Basel Shop, a “ephemeral concept store”, in an attempt to blatantly connect mass consumerism to the art world by way of e-commerce and entry-level price points.  

As an industry demanding growth above all else, (commanding every last dollar possible through the addition of more art fairs, “shops”, online platforms, and software subscriptions), the foundation is now revealing fractures. At the heart of it is a manic race to the bottom impacting artists careers in motion through over-saturation, an expectation to demand exorbitant prices early on without an exhibition history, the disillusion of academics or artists taking risks to open galleries, and the commitment of collectors to acquire on a thoughtful level that does more than follow trends, impacting artists careers, and public and private collections globally.²

This monumental level of glut, often assumed as growth in accessibility, has caused the overextension and glaze-over of collectors, curators, and artist production. The demise of galleries exhibiting experimental work by early career artists, galleries primarily operated by writers, art historians, or artists, can be reasonably linked to the lack of faith in perseverance or continued risk as the industry becomes more corporatized, economically polarized, and aggressively focused on growth.  Of the mid-tier galleries that are experiencing a level of stability or growth, it is impossible to clearly identify what their program actually is beyond innocuous and reactive.

When understood as a collection of small businesses financed by individuals, the excitement driven by moving galleries to the new ‘art world destination’³ is illogical. While various press outlets egregiously celebrate individual real estate brokers for getting these leases signed, the commercial rent in these neighborhoods become unreachable for most to participate and will continue to rise making it more difficult to weather a soft market for those who attempt to remain. In New York, the need to open a bigger and better space every few years is a fallacy from another time with a completely different economy and demographic. As demand and rents increase in these art world destinations, this trend becomes catastrophic for galleries fostering a slow burn, investing in the regularity of emerging and mid-career artists year after year, instead of cycling through young artists who have reached a premature saturation point in multiple cities in order to keep competitive with such tight margins, essentially burning through an artist before they have the space and time to develop.

The consensus remains that it is impossible to compete with mega-galleries and their vast resources, especially in such an uncertain economy. However, there are methods that can support emerging and mid-tier galleries for those who chose to remain in that segment and foster growth in a way that allows for experimentation and risk-taking, which is important for the health of the entire ecosystem including dealers, curators, artists and collectors. Degrowth being the main tenant of this prototype, requires younger galleries to drastically reduce spending and resist emulating galleries that are in a different economic zone than they are, including assessing the real returns that art fairs provide against their individual investment opportunity.

As galleries are critical in establishing an artist career and while many artists are managing direct sales in the earlier part of their career, artists taking agency over their studio inventory and acting as an independent small business that contract with galleries through collaboration (in lieu of singular representation), would allow a gallery and artist to work interdependently without the restraints and financial burden of representation on one gallery assuming the financial burden of building the career alone. There are examples of mid-career artists who successfully employ this, including Rochelle Feinstein who announced her co-representation among six galleries in 2022^,4 (Bridget Donahue, Hannah Hoffman, Nina Johnson, Candice Madey, Galerie Francesca Pia and Emanuela Campoli), or, artists like Alvaro Barrington who collaborates through "amicably fluid relationships” with eight different galleries worldwide.⁵ 

When artists and galleries form alliances to help each other succeed, it has systemic reach that encourages a sustainable system of galleries and growth based on relationship and mutual selection, rather than young galleries overextending themselves financially (going into debt) to compete beyond their means, and artists having one foot out of the relationship assuming every step made is toward a future representation at a mega-gallery, which is not a reliable narrative given 85.7% of fine artists in New York earned less than $50,000 a year in 2022.⁶

Mutual collaboration between emerging to mid-career artists and galleries, with galleries controlling for operation costs in the interim, could assist in the viability of younger galleries to remain solvent, provide enough coverage and sales opportunities for artists to get recognition and sales in a satisfying way.  Providing communication and collaboration between multiple galleries in the case of a single artist and inventory could also readjust for collectors on the topic of discounts. As it stands, collectors will ‘shop' multiple independent galleries to get the best discount, which is typically absorbed by the gallery at a loss. This would work as a benefit for the gallery and the artist financially and create stability for everyone involved. 

The theater of the art world remains one of excess, luxury, and unlimited reach, but much like the quizzically deafening silence in New York as these galleries announce closures, the urgency is obvious. The trend of dealers closing their galleries and becoming employees of larger blue-chip galleries only highlights the current lack of long-term viability for younger galleries to remain in New York and begs the question of the city’s ability to identity as an art capital as the only consistent growth is that of mega-galleries who amassed their fortune in a completely different economic landscape decades prior. 

The art world does not need to corporatize to evolve, it needs financial management at the individual level acutely grounded in the goals of the exhibition program, the ability to collaborate between multiple dealers and artists concurrently, and above all, the insight to refuse when necessary.

Said another way, through the lens of a different industry (fashion) facing a similar level of glut in scale and cost for the visibility of emerging designers, Dilara Findikoglu drew a line clearly stating the reality versus fiction of the idea of growth by any means necessary, shielding her brand by sitting out fashion week:

“To put on a show, I have to have a brand,” Ms. Findikoglu said. “The Dilara world and all its drama doesn’t come for free. Everyone needs to be paid. With my shows, I take my brain out of my head and put it on the runway for everyone to see. If I have to do that in a halfhearted way, then all the other sacrifices stop being worth it”.⁷