A gallery is a group of paintings or other artwork displayed together. A gallery wall is a great way to show off your favorite pieces of art, and it can also be a beautiful accent piece for your home. A gallery wall can be made up of just picture frames or you can use other decor to make it more unique. There are so many ways to create a gallery wall, and the possibilities are endless.
The term gallery is derived from the Latin word galleria, which means a long, narrow passage along a wall, first used in the sense of a place for art in 1590. In modern usage, the word is mainly used to describe rooms or buildings where art is displayed and offered for sale. Art galleries can be private or public, and they can specialize in a particular kind of art, such as paintings or graphic arts.
Although galleries do a lot of work when it comes to organizing exhibitions and selling artworks, they are also active in other aspects that support their artists and the whole gallery organization. For example, they participate in art fairs to promote their artists internationally and also take care of or follow up on book publishing when an artist is ready to publish a monograph. In addition, they often look for attractive exhibition opportunities for their artists beyond their own space, whether at other galleries or institutional shows.
Another important thing that galleries do for their artists is act as a classic broker or trader for them, taking care of everything necessary to get the artwork from the artist to the collector, such as transportation costs, invoicing, communication with the client, tracking sold artworks and monitoring their value on the secondary market. All this is done in exchange for the negotiated commission that the gallery earns with each artwork sold.
The responsibilities of a gallery also include the handling of all the paperwork involved in the sale and purchase of an artwork, including the contract, invoice and receipt, as well as any insurance coverage. They are also liable for the safekeeping of all artworks in their possession. In the case of consigned artworks that are sold during an exhibition, they are usually returned to the artist once the show is over. In most cases, established galleries pay all transportation charges for the artworks they sell. This is generally not the case with emerging galleries.