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Art Gallery Store
An art gallery or art museum is a space for the exhibition of art, usually visual art, and usually primarily paintings. Sculpture, photographs, illustrations, and objects from the applied arts may also be shown.[1] The term is used both for both public galleries, which are museums for the display of a permanent collection of art, and private galleries, which are commercial enterprises for the sale of art. However both types of gallery may host temporary exhibitions including art borrowed from elsewhere.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 Egypt Gallery, for example.
The term contemporary art gallery refers to a usually a privately-owned for-profit commercial gallery. These galleries are often found clustered together in urban centers such as the Chelsea district of New York, widely considered to be the center of the contemporary art world. Most large urban areas have several private art galleries, and most towns will be home to at least one. However, they may also be found in small communities, and remote areas where artists congregate, i.e. 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 cut of the art's sales; from 25 to 50% is usual. There are also many not-for-profit and art-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 often choose to represent artists exclusively, giving them the opportunity to show regularly. One idiosyncrasy of contemporary art galleries is their aversion to signing business contracts, although this seems to be changing.
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 music concerts or poetry readings. Conversely, some works of visual art are not shown in a gallery. In particular, works on paper, such as drawings and old master prints are considered by curators as unable to be permanently displayed for conservation reasons. Instead any collection is held in a print room in 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 large museum 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.
