International Galleries Alliance wants to unite the art world

In a rapidly changing industry like the contemporary art world, with so many small players, the lack of a global collective voice has long been felt. Today, a pioneering group of resellers have created the International Galleries Alliance (IGA), with embryonic plans for everything from tops to an online sales platform. He wants to attract an initial 300 members so that they can withstand all the storms in force.

“We came together at such an important time, to chart a course in an increasingly digital world,” says Vanessa Carlos, founder of the London gallery Carlos / Ishikawa and one of the 21 members of the organizing committee. His colleagues cover Guatemala, South Africa, India and Hong Kong. There are 163 members to date, with 19 on the IGA voting committee to select its members.

Formal and informal links between galleries already exist – notably the Society of London Art Dealers and the Art Dealers Association of America – but as their names suggest, these operate regionally and are predominantly Western. Now that technology has brought us all closer together, a larger community of like-minded professionals has become possible. Additionally, as many IGA members note, Covid-19 has given the industry a chance to take a break and reassess its structures.

“In the last two years, there have been so many more initiatives to allow galleries to gain exposure without having to incur huge expenses,” explains Lorraine Kiang, co-founder of the Edouard Malingue gallery in Hong Kong. “So I happily said yes to [the IGA] to discuss how the art industry can evolve over time.

London gallery owner Sadie Coles, whose group galvanizing WhatsApp during the pandemic set in motion current collaborations including the IGA, says Covid “forced the issue because at first neither of us had anything to do , so we all talked to each other. She notes other collaborations that developed in earnest during the pandemic, including Italics, South South, Gallery Platform LA and the Gallery Climate Coalition, which now has more than 550 members.

At the top of the IGA’s agenda is its first regular summit, organized on Zoom to take into account the geographical distribution of its members. Discussion topics are still the subject of debate, but environmental issues come to the fore, while other hot areas include the balance between real and virtual exhibitions, decentralized sales platforms, and gallery relationships. , art fairs and auction houses.

“There are much bigger issues than, say, the future of fairs,” says Coles, “it’s more about the ecosystem as a whole and potentially even quite philosophical. Personally, I’m very excited about it. ‘idea of ​​using the IGA to lobby for arts education, for example. ”She also notes that the geographic and economic differences between the galleries already on board show how complex and nuanced some subjects are. “We have to recognize that right now in some ways it’s a luxury to go carbon neutral,” she says.

Pamela Echeverría, founder of Labor Gallery in Mexico City, explains that her motivations for joining the organizing committee include more prosaic results. “It is as much about concluding agreements with maritime partners as it is about discussing the future of NFTs [non-fungible tokens], “she says. Prateek Raja, co-founder of the Experimenter Gallery in Kolkata, says that the IGA is” a forerunner of something that we might get in the future. It’s like the industry. edition had met before the arrival of Amazon.

This Amazon could take the form of something engulfing all the data in the galleries. Raja wants to be able to “own the platform ourselves, control our data, our customers, our behavior”. While other organizations – including art fairs, auction houses and some of the main galleries on the circuit – have loaned their platforms to galleries during the pandemic, concerns have been expressed over how protect confidential information.

For the IGA, the emphasis is on collaboration. Membership is by invitation, based on decisions of the voting committee, which – like the organizing committee – will rotate every two years. In theory, the members will make all the decisions together. Blum describes it as “a completely decapitated democratization, a union”, Raja as “a utopian idea”.

Members accept that this could be a challenge. “Of course there will be human issues. Each square in a Zoom meeting represents an ego with its own anxieties, ”explains Echeverría. But she and others support the flat structure. Raja says: “Despite the best intentions, the art world has created hierarchies. But basically we all have similar ideals and [the IGA] is about camaraderie, friendship and equality.

If most of the galleries of the organizing committee are well established, their objective is to recruit more emerging outfits and to promote diversity. “On a personal level, I am happy to contribute to something that was not available to me when I was going up,” says Tim Blum, who co-founded Blum & Poe in Santa Monica in 1994 and now operates also in New York and Tokyo. Raja talks about developing a forum in which “everyone can speak openly, be courageous and feel safe”. The organizers have set the IGA membership fee at £ 650 per year, which adds to its accessibility.

Plans for the e-commerce platform are still in their infancy – Vanessa Carlos says her timing is “to come” – but members believe this is an important outcome of the ‘alliance. “We could all feel tired of OVRs [online viewing rooms] since the pandemic, but there is no way our world will not move in that direction, ”says Carlos. “So instead of resisting it, we have to let it work with whatever we do. “

No one is quite sure what the shape of things to come – organizers only started recruiting members last month – but the feeling of upsetting the status quo in a post-pandemic world is strongly evident. “We all want a more enriching dialogue. We just have to organize ourselves so that we can be stronger together, ”says Coles. Blum adds: “It’s an experience, but we won’t go back to the old Peripatetic system. We want to find a new balance.