A night on the town - in front of the computer
Hi all, long time reader, first time poster...
I thought I would cheat slightly on my first post to generate discussion around my own interest and the interests of the course.
I own an art gallery (yes, I'm 19) on Queen St with 3 friends, Treehouse Gallery. We started up to help emerging artists exhibit in the central city and so far we have been fairly successful in doing so.
When we opened I put together the website as a sort of newsletter for upcoming shows and things with a few pictures of work and flyers etc. As the gallery started having openings on Friday night, I would have e-mails from people wanting photos of the work online at the same time. I found, to my utmost surprise, that people were waiting online for the photos of the work in order to e-mail me if they wanted to buy it.
I actually found that more people from Auckland were doing this than anybody else, rather than coming in to the gallery first to have a look (usually this was done after they had bid on something)
Online gallery's aren't a new phenomenon, but it struck me as strange that people would rather look online than come out to the gallery and be social.
My solution is: I put the photos up on the website after the exhibition has been running a few days, this insures people come to the gallery and we know we are getting to foot traffic and also because people who buy when they are at the gallery are not likely to change their mind to when they hold it online and then come in and see it.
I suppose it's the new way... but there has got to be something in going out to a gallery to look at the pieces on the wall rather than fuzzy pictures on the computer screen, I certainly couldn't own an erxclusively online gallery.
Would be interesting to see what you think...
www.treehousegallery.co.nz
Ben McMahon
I thought I would cheat slightly on my first post to generate discussion around my own interest and the interests of the course.
I own an art gallery (yes, I'm 19) on Queen St with 3 friends, Treehouse Gallery. We started up to help emerging artists exhibit in the central city and so far we have been fairly successful in doing so.
When we opened I put together the website as a sort of newsletter for upcoming shows and things with a few pictures of work and flyers etc. As the gallery started having openings on Friday night, I would have e-mails from people wanting photos of the work online at the same time. I found, to my utmost surprise, that people were waiting online for the photos of the work in order to e-mail me if they wanted to buy it.
I actually found that more people from Auckland were doing this than anybody else, rather than coming in to the gallery first to have a look (usually this was done after they had bid on something)
Online gallery's aren't a new phenomenon, but it struck me as strange that people would rather look online than come out to the gallery and be social.
My solution is: I put the photos up on the website after the exhibition has been running a few days, this insures people come to the gallery and we know we are getting to foot traffic and also because people who buy when they are at the gallery are not likely to change their mind to when they hold it online and then come in and see it.
I suppose it's the new way... but there has got to be something in going out to a gallery to look at the pieces on the wall rather than fuzzy pictures on the computer screen, I certainly couldn't own an erxclusively online gallery.
Would be interesting to see what you think...
www.treehousegallery.co.nz
Ben McMahon
posted by Ben McMahon at 10:36 am
1 Comments:
I find it strange that people do this in one way, I know I would never by something like art online before seeing it in real life, because art is special, and you don't get to study the details of it online. On the other hand, I can understand if people see something they like online, and then hold it to come see it thinking they are most likely going to buy it. It insures no-one else will buy it first.
But yes, I agree that an exclusively online gallery would certainly not be my style...
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