Budgeting money for art shows is an often ignored topic. The Heading of this blog entry should have more accurately been "How much does it cost to rent wall space in a juried art gallery show?". The fact of the matter is that the vast majority of serious fine artists (say 99.5% of all artists) have few options available to get their art seen.
This blog entry has nothing to do with the *arts and crafts* army of craftspeople who have similar but different economics working for them. This is about Art Gallery shows - mostly juried.
Art galleries are everywhere and they are easier than ever to enter. CallForEntry.org is one of many call-for-artists show aggregators through which an artist can locate shows of interest. Aside from distance shows most artists choose to join a local gallery or two that are familiar and dependable.
With that as a context for the following fiscal considerations. It should be obvious that the default values assigned in the following calculations are numbers you can change to suit your local reality.
Gallery Membership Fees
Unless you are represented by a gallery, almost all galleries will charge a yearly membership fee and schedule a certain number of usually monthly shows that members can participate in. For the sake of argument let's assign some default values to each of these shows (show-op).
The assumption here is that the artist will participate in all available show opportunities.
Obviously, you don't have to join a gallery membership in which case this cost is $0.00 in later calculations.
1 default yearly membership fee = $48.00
default number of yearly show-ops = 4
1 show-op = 1 yearly membership fee/number of show-ops/membership year = $12.00 [default]
The Cost of Rejection
We have pegged the value of both juried and member free shows identically to keep the arithmetic straightforward. But that number will need to be adjusted to accurately calculate our true cost of participation. This refers to all pieces being rejected only - in other words no representation in the show at all.
1 show-op-rejection = 1 show-ops [$12.00 default]
An adjusted show-op cost will be the number of show op-rejections added to the cost of the remaining show-ops
(1 [or more] rejection(s) [$12] + ($36 [cost of 3 more show-ops]))/ 3 [remaining show-ops]
OR
$48/3 = $16 per remaining show-op entry
The Cost of Entry/Piece
We will simply assume that some number of objects will be getting entered into the art show and that this cost per entry will be different for members and more for non-members of a gallery. Other esoteric considerations can also intervene.
We'll keep it simple. Here a default cost per piece is $15.00 + (cost of rejected pieces/number of accepted pieces).
Show Expenses
Here you can adjust these default values as you see fit.
Cost of time-to-deliver/pickup = $15/hr
Cost of round trip fuel = $20
Cost of Tolls = ($0 to $40+)
Cost of parking = $0.00
Cost of work opt-out [or gallery sitting] = $20.00
Cost of Shipping Fees = $0.00
Show expenses = your sum of these costs
Gallery Commission
Every art gallery is the same yet different. If a sale is made of your work, you receive a percentage of that sales price.
Generally speaking, a reasonable commission is 35% of a sales. Use a percentage that reflects your reality as reasonable. Then take any commission fee that exceeds that reasonable expectation and treat it as lost opportunity cost (LOC).
So if your work sells for $1000 with a reasonable commission of 35% ($350.00) but is charged a commission of 50% ($500) then consider the $150 difference as an LOC cost in our final calculations.
So What's Our Sample Cost to Show Some Work?
12.00 [membership fee]
15.00 [1 piece entered]
30.00 [delivery/pickup]
20.00 [Fuel]
20.00 [opt-out of sitting]
_____
$97.00 total cost of the happy path version of expenses
Gallery Hours
No calculation of expenses is worthwhile without understanding what you just paid for. In this sample, it is the cost to rent space on a gallery wall for a certain number of viewable hours.
As a default let's assume the show last 1 month and is open 8 hours a day on Saturday and Sunday. That's 4 x 16 = 64 hours
So 97/64 = approx. $1.50/viewing hour
Comparing gallery viewing hour costs per show is an exercise in managing the economy of showing work.
What's It Mean
What it means is that in order to make it worthwhile you need to charge at least 2 times as much for your work as you spend on showing it plus what the work costed you to make.
Rounding up that sample $97 to show cost to $100 and adding a $200 cost to make the work means that the piece must sell at $600 of which the artist will get $390.