Art Galleries
An art gallery or art museum is a building or space for the exhibition of art, usually visual art. Museums can be public or private, but what distinguishes a museum is the ownership of a collection. Paintings are the most commonly displayed art objects; however, sculpture, decorative arts, furniture, textiles, costume, drawings, pastels, watercolours, collages, prints, artists' books, photographs, and installation art are also regularly shown. Although primarily concerned with providing a space to show works of visual art, art galleries are sometimes used to host other artistic activities, such as performance art, music concerts, or poetry readings.
Types of galleries
The term is used for both public galleries, which are non-profit or publicly owned museums that display selected collections of art. On the other hand private galleries refer to the commercial enterprises for the sale of art. However, both types of gallery may host travelling exhibits or temporary exhibitions including art borrowed from elsewhere.
Galleries in museums
The rooms in museums where art is displayed for the public are often referred to as galleries as well, with a room dedicated to Ancient Egyptian art often being called the Egyptian Gallery, for example.
Contemporary art gallery
The term contemporary art gallery refers usually to a privately owned for-profit commercial gallery. These galleries are often found clustered together in large urban centres. Smaller cities are usually home to at least one gallery, but they may also be found in towns or villages, and remote areas where artists congregate, e.g. the Taos art colony and St Ives, Cornwall.
Contemporary art galleries are usually open to the general public without charge; however, some are semi-private. They usually profit by taking a portion of art sales; from 25% to 50% is typical. There are also many non-profit or collective galleries.
Some galleries in cities like Tokyo charge the artists a flat rate per day, though this is considered distasteful in some international art markets. Galleries often hang solo shows. Curators often create group shows that say something about a certain theme, trend in art, or group of associated artists. Galleries sometimes choose to represent artists exclusively, giving them the opportunity to show regularly.
A gallery's definition can also include the artist cooperative or artist-run space, which often (in North America and Western Europe) operates as a space with a more democratic mission and selection process. Such galleries typically have a board of directors and a volunteer or paid support staff that select and curate shows by committee, or some kind of similar process to choose art that typically lacks commercial ends.
Online galleries
With the emergence of the internet many artists and gallery owners have opened art galleries online. International Art Gallery - www.internationalartgallery.org - Airbrush, Ceramics and Glass, Paintings, Photography, Sculptures, Tapestries, Tattoo...
PremierGallery-www.premiergallery.co.uk - Gallery of art & photography - serving artists, photographers, art lovers and print collectors BBL Gallery is a gallery dedicated to artists by artists as well as a destination for art makers and art lover’s alike. The ultimate goal of BBL is to give emerging and underexposed artists recognition and exposure.
Vanity galleries
A vanity gallery is an art gallery that charges fees from artists in order to show their work, much like a vanity press does for authors.
Visual art not shown in a gallery
Works on paper, such as drawings, pastels, watercolours, prints, and photographs are typically not permanently displayed for conservation reasons. Instead, public access to these materials is provided by a dedicated print study room located within the museum. Murals generally remain where they have been painted, although many have been removed to galleries. Various forms of 20th century art, such as land art and performance art, also usually exist outside a gallery. Photographic records of these kinds of art are often shown in galleries, however. Most museum and large art galleries own more works than they have room to display. The rest are held in reserve collections, on or off-site.
Similar to an art gallery is the sculpture garden (or sculpture park), which presents sculpture in an outdoor space. Sculpture installation has grown in popularity, whereby temporary sculptures are installed in open spaces during events like festivals.