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As the art trade once again shifts into the high gear of autumn after its customary late summer lull, a new survey of hundreds of commercial gallery professionals reinforces the belief that selling art remains a labour of love—and that the labour seldom loves its suppliers back.
Published by the inventory and sales management platform Artlogic, the report forgoes splashier metrics such as annual or quarterly sales revenue and focuses instead on quantifying the often unglamorous realities of the workplace experience for gallerists and their staff.
“While a lot of reports cover the art market itself, few dive into how galleries actually run day to day,” says Joe Elliott, Artlogic’s president and chief commercial officer. “We wanted to dig into how they’re managing, how they spend their time and how they juggle their work.”
Perhaps the most bracing finding is that only 49% of responding gallery professionals worldwide felt they have a “good work-life balance”—an uncomfortable statistic from a report that has been given the fitting title 24/7 Art.
Yet this global data also masks a stark regional divide. Among respondents in Europe (including the UK), 57% said they were content with the equilibrium between their personal and professional lives, compared with only 39% of their peers based in North America (where, it should be noted, the largest share of sales are made year after year).
The survey is small, with only 333 dealers and gallery staff participating, and 55% of the sample working in the US or UK. But even though small sample sizes can produce misleading results, Artlogic’s findings align with several robust studies showing that North American workers across industries and job types are significantly more consumed by their profession on average than their counter-parts across the Atlantic.
For instance, in the 2024 edition of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) Global Work-Life Balance Index, 16 of the 20 most favourable countries for workers were European (counting the UK, which ranked 15th). The US, by contrast, placed 55th out of 60, between Bangladesh (54th) and Turkey (56th), though Canada lifted North America’s average by finishing at the other end of the rankings, in fifth.
Among respondents to Artlogic’s survey, the demands of gallery life varied not only by locale but also by post-holder responsibilities. The report breaks out select data across seven common position types at commercial dealerships: founder, director, gallery manager, marketing/public relations, sales, registrar and gallery assistant.
Work-life bleed
In Europe, registrars were the only role group in which a majority (67%) reported dissatisfaction with their work-life balance. In North America, gallery managers claimed to be the most put upon, with 75% decrying the mission creep of their jobs into the rest of their lives—but they had plenty of company around them, with at least half the respondents across all role types in North America saying their jobs commanded an outsized portion of their days.
“The intense commitment to promoting art and culture in our society often means sacrificing work-life balance. Gallerists should be celebrated for their tireless efforts and passion,” Elliott says.
Yet he also acknowledges that “burnout is a real risk”, particularly because half of all respondents worldwide said they take most of their time off in either August or December every year, probably to fit in with the scheduling of art fairs and other features of the annual market calendar.
The findings in 24/7 Art have already led Artlogic to refine its products and services to offer more assistance to the large proportion of galleries that “struggle to maintain a sustainable year-round sales process”, Elliott says, adding that the company “definitely” plans to produce more studies in this vein in the future. “Our focus is to help galleries work smarter, not harder, to ensure they can take more time off, and technology can really help with this by streamlining their sales and operations.”
Still, the report’s findings are a reminder that certain regions’ gallery professionals are in more urgent need of help than others.
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