Perfect MAtch

The Gallerist/Artist Relationship

Placing Your Work In The Fine Art World

With Elinor Carucci, Michael Foley & Alan Rapp

Perfect Match: The Gallerist/Artist Relation

Placing your work in the fine art world – Why these COVID-19 challenging times might create an even more incredible opportunity to research, plan, and reach out to galleries.

As a bonus, we will be discussing considerations leading up to the publication of your work in book form.

February 1, 8, 15, and March 1

11:30 am – 2:30 pm EST

$495

Enrollment will open for the February 2022 edition beginning January 3rd!

This four-week workshop is for students who wish to learn and understand how their work can develop and grow by connecting with the right gallery to collaborate with. You will have the option to design your own exhibition using the floor plan of Foley Gallery.

In the fourth week, Alan Rapp will be our special guest for our session on publishing the photo book.

Open Enrollment
Class size is limited to 10 students
All classes are conducted via Zoom Meeting

The courtship between artist and gallerist is not unlike the path to a significant relationship. The search for the right partner, the building of trust, good communication, and financial agreements (and maybe even the breakup) all need to be handled along the way.

You will learn the strategies to most effectively approach a gallery, work with a gallery, and maintain a healthy relationship with one. This also means you need to know how to live and act like an artist that a gallery will want to work with. We will clearly define your responsibilities as an exhibiting artist and how to make the complete package of your work, personality, and professionalism as attractive as possible to the gallery that’s right for you.

Our workshop focuses on the significance of collaborating with a gallery and how to maximize the support and progress from this relationship. We will cover the different aspects of the process that photographers go through with galleries, review and edit students’ work and portfolios, and help them get one step closer to becoming professional artists with gallery representation.

We developed this class after working together for many years. It stems from our passion for photography, art, and the making of exhibitions. We firmly believe that finding the right pairing can accelerate an artist’s practice and career.

The class will include discussions of the following:

Part one – creating a portfolio and opportunities

Finding the right galleries for your work
How to approach, meet, and know the gallery, promos (mail or email for promotion – mass email vs. personalized ones), what to aim for when meeting the gallerist – how these times of COVID-19 might be an excellent opportunity to approach gallerist, since they might have more time to look at work and might search for relevant bodies of work to show post-COVID
Living like an artist

Part two – Now that you found the gallery

Plans and goals
Financial agreements or contract
Exclusive or non-exclusive representation, how one gallery handle exhibiting work with other non-representing galleries
Publications. How publishing a book helps and supports both the artist and gallery, going about this on your own or with the help of your gallery.
Pricing and editioning your work

Part three – Exhibitions; production and execution

The Exhibition! Dates, frames, talks in the gallery and other venues, the opening
Designing your exhibition: sequencing, rhythm, placement, and activation
Sales and collectors
Curators and Museums
Storing the work after the show
In between shows; how to maintain activity in those no-exhibitions times

Part four – Designing your exhibition (optional)

Share your ideas about your own exhibition, and we will review your maquette design of a proposed exhibition of your work.

Students will share their work and portfolio. Feedback on the work will be given, and we will help each student think about their work in the context of a gallery and exhibitions.

Two pre-assignment will be given.

Part five – Publishing your book

Edit and sequence
Methods of presentation
Maquettes: versions and revisions
Format and production specifications: orientation, price point, paper
Collaboration with designers
Other components of the book: text, artist statement, essay, CV
Researching your market
The book proposal, approaching publishers
Deliverables: what the photographer provides
The offer and deal
Contracts
Marketing and promotions: the author’s role

Pre-assignment:

Other than sharing your body/ies of work, please prepare the following:

A three-minute oral presentation about your artwork.

Optional:

2. A maquette or sketch of your proposed exhibition (you will be given a floor plan) with your work up on the wall. The goal is to think about space, sizes, sequencing, single image vs. grids or strips, frames vs. mounted prints. How does your work fit in a space, up on the wall, pay attention to the use of space, the color of the wall? We want you to think about all that. The presentation can be drawn by hand or done digitally and does not have to represent a final presentation but more a thought about your work and how it exists in a space.

Structure:

Each day will include presentations by Elinor and Michael, talking about their work and careers and information sessions of the above list, and reviewing students work in relation to the art market, encouraging students to develop skills in building, editing, and pitching their work to a gallery to creating a constructive relationship with one. & Marc

join us

we look forward to working with you!

Completing this session will help you:

Who is the course for?

Artists who are committed to their professional practice and want to achieve gallery representation.

What people are saying

Elinor and Michael were both passionate and engaging! While, Covid and stay at home orders have been hard and it all becomes depressing fast. It has also opened things up to where events like this are more attainable for someone like me that doesn't live in NYC. Thank you for sharing your knowledge with all of us I hope to start using it soon, once I narrow down a few galleries where my work would be a good fit.

Troy Colby

Lawrence, KS

Your seminar was the Perfect Match! Infinite thank you's for this incredibly helpful, enlightening, insightful and chock full-of-practical suggestions and highly MOTIVATING seminar. WOW. My work is cut out for me! Wonderful, informative, fast-paced class that was also inspiring and above all, motivating. Thanks so much to Michael and Elinor for all your efforts and for sharing so many invaluable thoughts, feedback and advice! I so appreciate your candor, your sharing your knowledge with us, your positive energy, your thoughtful critiques and all the specific hints and suggestions for approaching galleries, preparing for an exhibition ... the whole process.

Robin Siegel

New York, NY

I really enjoyed the class and although I'm just beginning to think ahead, I learned so much from all of you and feel a lot more comfortable taking the next steps. Thank you Michael and Elinor for all that you shared.

Katherine Sidelsky

New Rochelle

Thank you again for a great workshop -- so well-done!

Amy Montali

Providence, RI

That was such an informative and terrific class, thank you Elinor and Michael!

Maureen Drennan

New York, NY

Thank you so much for the insight you and Elinor gave me during the perfect match workshop. I'm so grateful to have been given that opportunity. Your gallery recommendations were so great as well, and as restrictions lift I’m excited to lay the groundwork of relationships with them.

Lila Barth

Queens, ny

I highly recommend the Perfect Match class, especially if you are interested in getting your work into galleries. Both Michael and Elinor have a wealth of knowledge in the area, and generously share their insights and recommendations to their students. I was inspired by the content of each class and have been reflecting on the individual commentary given, as I’m sure I will for some time moving forward in my practice.

James Barkley

Boston, MA

First of all, I want to thank you both for this really incredible class! I have learned so much from both of your's wealth of experience and I really appreciate everything you have shared with us! I was also so inspired by my peers- everyone was really talented and I really enjoyed the individual presentations. This class came at the perfect time for me as I move across country to Chicago from the SF Bay area and as I try to develop relationships with the local galleries, institutions, and artists.

Lois Bielefeld

Chicago, IL

I wanted to take the time to thank you for the class. The information and insight was invaluable and such a fantastic experience. I really appreciated the amount/quality and depth of the information. Really truly priceless .

Katherine Westerman

Los Angeles, CA

Everything I always wanted to know about placing my work in the fine art world, but never found the right person, time or place to ask.

Invild Melby

Eiksmarka, Norway

Thank you for the workshop. You gave us great information during the class and also great feedback. I feel so lucky to have been able to to take a class taught by the two of you because you bring so much by sharing your energy, knowledge and experience. It also felt like a safe space to share difficult experiences, this is not always the case..

Josefina Fernandez Moran

Brooklyn, NY

I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to participate in this class with you both. You made my "re-entry" into the art world feel supportive and insightful and much less painful than I thought it would be!
I got so much from listening to your feedback on each student's work, it helped me look at my own process in new ways. Such a talented group. What really amazed me was how much insight I received from my own critique, those 20 minutes have helped me to understand my project in new and exciting ways and I have a renewed focus and perspective for this work.
All of the information you shared is useful but I really loved hearing your personal journey's, that personal touch to how you got to be where you are was inspiring for me. You both are talented, compassionate and kind artists and I appreciate your willingness to support our creative processes.
Without overdoing my praise, please know that I think you are both wonderful teachers and I hope to meet you again on this journey. Continue your gorgeous work Elinor, you inspire me deeply. And Michael, keep cultivating and supporting artists, you have a gift.

Mayita Mendez

Protection Island, British Columbia

Perfect Match was a perfect introduction to the gallery - artist relationship. Michael and Elinor shared their long experience in the art world in an accessible way that made a neophyte like me comfortable, while learning so much. Sharing my work with other artists for the first time and having the opportunity to see theirs, was inspiring and useful. It helped me better understand my own work and made me begin to think about the direction it should take. .

Todd Bryant

Norwalk, CT

I was able to get a last-minute opening in Michael Foley and Elinor Carucci’s course, Perfect Match, which covered how to find and work with a gallery. Honestly, it was one of the best classes I have ever taken anywhere, from anyone, and that includes an 18 hour, free to attend class done by the Hawaii Triennial Foundation using NYC-based curators, SM directors, and legal professionals. Michael and Elinor were engaged and engaging. The information given was rock solid and beyond helpful. They were generous, open, honest, and treated us like peers entitled to be there with them. If you have the chance to take this course and you are wondering how to how to find and work with a gallery, I say “RUN DON'T WALK" to sign up! You will never regret it.”

Diana Nicholette Jeon

Honolulu, HI

The Perfect Match turned out to be one of the true bright spots of the pandemic. It had not occurred to me before signing up, that the taking this from the art photographer whose whole life work focuses on a radical kind of vulnerability, that her approach to art would translate to a business-oriented behind-the-scenes glimpse of the gallery world. But it does — the same, compelling deeply human quality in Carucci’s work is also seeded into this remarkable workshop. On the surface, participants get a stellar look at the nuts and bolts of gallery work. But the subtext, in the warm but nuanced collaboration between gallerist (Foley) and artist (Carucci), we also see a model of how it can be. That’s the kind of thing you can’t read in a book. And we learn that it is ongoing work, but really nice and appealing, steeped in friendship and honesty. This environment is then graciously extended to each participant in many ways, most notably, the fantastic opportunity to present his/her own work, and throughout the duration of the workshop, an inviting space to ask any question. This is a top workshop, I can’t recommend it enough.

Kris Davidson

Seattle, WA

I’m writing to let you know that I secured my first solo show, and I owe this success to you, your teaching, and the Perfect Match Class. Thanks to both of you, I was able to use the skills and information you presented to build a connection with a curator who had selected one of my images for a group show and continue the conversation into a solo exhibition. I am beyond thrilled. Thank you a million times. I would 100% recommend the class to another photographer.

Olivia Phare

Phoenix, AZ

Thank you for the excellent teaching on the Gallery and Perfect Match programmes. I appreciated the quality and quantity of experience that went into the material being offered by you and Elinor; also to the skill and frankness with which the material was being offered - for example Elinor’s honesty about her professional ups and downs added real weight and veracity to the content of the the Match programme. I felt that what could easily have been a long list of injunctions was being subtly transformed into a new state of mind. My job now is to conserve and develop this felt insight into what it means to be a photographer. Writing this to you both is part of a process of consolidating this inkling of a changed state; of re-creating myself as a photographer from the investment of your teaching.

Rob Farrands

Oxford, England

Are You Ready To Start?

enroll now!

Elinor Carucci

Artist/mother

Born 1971 in Jerusalem, Elinor Carucci graduated in 1995 from Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design with a degree in photography, and moved to New York that same year. Her work has been included in many solo and group exhibitions worldwide, solo shows include Edwynn Houk gallery, Fifty One Fine Art Gallery, FoMU, and Gagosian Gallery, London among others and group shows include The Museum of Modern Art New York, MoCP Chicago and The Photographers’ Gallery, London.

Her photographs are included in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art New York, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Houston Museum of Fine Art, among others and her work appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Details, New York Magazine, W, Aperture, ARTnews and many more publications.

She was awarded the ICP Infinity Award in 2001, The Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002 and NYFA in 2010. Carucci has published three monographs to date, Closer, Chronicle Books 2002 and Diary of a dancer, SteidlMack 2005 and MOTHER, Prestel 2013. In fall of 2019 Monacelli Press published her fourth monograph, Midlife.

The New Yorker magazine picked her published portfolio, Silver Linings, as one of their top stories and photo essays of 2021

Carucci teaches at the graduate program of Photography and Lens-based art at the School of Visual Arts and is represented by Edwynn Houk Gallery. In January of 2023 she will have a solo show at the Jewish Museum in NYC.

Michael Foley

Artist/educator/gallerist

Michael Foley opened his gallery in the fall of 2004 after fourteen years of working with notable photography galleries including Fraenkel Gallery, Howard Greenberg Gallery and Yancey Richardson Gallery.

The gallery has been invited to participate in over twenty international and national art fairs include Paris Photo, Pulse New York and the London Art Fair. The gallery has been a member of AIPAD for three years.

Gallery exhibitions and artists have been reviewed and written about in several publications including The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Modern Painters and ArtNEWS.

In 2009, Foley co-founded The Exhibition Lab, a study center for people involved in various aspects of fine art photography. He is a mentor and coach to dozens of independent photographers with a focus on refining their vision and preparing their work professionally.

Foley continues his interest in educating by serving on the faculty of the School of Visual Arts where he teaches and lectures on issues in contemporary photography at the undergraduate and graduate levels. and the International Center of Photography where he teaches and lectures on issues in contemporary photography.

He has been a portfolio reviewer at over 25 photography reviews throughout the United States.

Alan Rapp

Publisher/Writer

Alan Rapp is the editorial director at Monacelli, a division of Phaidon. He is an editor, book developer, and writer specializing in photography, architecture, and design.

He started his visual book publishing career at Chronicle Books, where he developed the photography list and published books by Elinor Carucci, David Maisel, Jona Frank, Jim Marshall, Linda Connor, and Henry Horenstein.

Under the Monacelli umbrella, he has collaborated on new works by Elinor Carucci (Midlife) and Jona Frank (Cherry Hill), as well as Cig Harvey’s fourth book, Blue Violet.

He has contributed to several books and his writing has appeared in numerous print and web publications, including The Photobook Review, Modern Painters, and Urban Omnibus.

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