NELSON HANCOCK GALLERY

We've just launched an updated version of our gallery website. While the layout is similar to that of our old site, the new site has been completely re-written for reliability and ease of use. We'll also be filling in many of our early shows which were missing from our previous site. Have a look around and let us know what you think.

Adding a blog to my gallery’s refurbished website seemed like an odd choice. I opened my gallery two years ago, with little first-hand experience, and instantly began to pay very close attention to how it’s done by the seasoned pros. One thing you notice quickly is that galleries don’t tend to blog, or to talk at all. In fact, with the exception of the rather dry and pat press release, galleries have no public voice. Museums talk a lot but galleries keep their mouths shut in public.

One simple explanation is that galleries say everything they need to say through their exhibition choices (or their p.r. people). Even the advertisements that run in the art mags are free of ad copy. It is a strange form of mute promotion. It’s buzz without … something. Content? Argument? Specificity? Conviction?

Part of it, of course, is that too much talk calls attention to the art scene’s most embarrassing feature – the money. Too much talk from a gallery seems like too much effort, a desperate sales pitch, the kiss of death. In the strangest of markets, the art market, you’re always safe making disparaging remarks about the fact that it’s a market. Alec Soth recently offered a diplomatic summation of the recent Art Chicago fair:

As usual, the toxic mix of money and decontextualized art was nearly devastating. For the record, I think these fairs have a lot of good work and I’m grateful for the business that gets done. I’m just not sure it is healthy for artists to spend much time watching this business get done.

Jerry Saltz, in a different mode, mocked the “hippy dippy” statements made by P.S. 1 director Alanna Heiss about her recent group show “Not For Sale.” Claiming an “allergy” to the marketplace , Heiss organized a very large show consisting of works that are not on the market [right now]. Saltz rather hilariously goes to town on this naïve premise, suggesting the show should have been called “Journey to the Center of My Rolodex,” and musing that many of the works are not for sale simply because no one wanted to buy them. Read the whole article

I promise to keep this blog in the space between “toxic” and “hippy dippy.” That's where I keep the gallery. Gerhard Richter, who should know, mused in his diary that the art scene has "virtually nothing whatever to do with art" and likens it to stamp-collecting and cat-breeding (because it "satisfies our need for communication").

Nonetheless, here, I promise, you will find something to do with art.