Careers hub
A practical guide for anyone building a career in commercial galleries — what the job involves day to day, how pay is structured, what to learn next, and how to prove it on paper.
The job is operations, sales support and diplomacy in roughly equal measure. A typical week includes:
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Front of house, data entry, shipping admin, image files, opening logistics. The apprenticeship where you learn how a gallery actually moves.
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Owns a system: inventory, consignments or the mailing list. Runs parts of an exhibition without supervision.
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Runs operations end to end — inventory, shows, invoicing, staff and reporting — and usually carries some sales responsibility.
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Owns collector relationships and revenue. Programming input, fair strategy, artist negotiation.
Pay varies substantially by city, gallery size and whether the role carries sales commission. Check live postings for current local ranges rather than relying on a national average.
Every work with an inventory number, a location, a status and an image. If a director asks what is available in a price band, you answer in under a minute.
You can read an agreement, spot a missing return date, and explain a commission split without hedging.
Writing an honest condition report, tracking ownership history, and knowing what documentation a sale requires.
Notes after every conversation, a follow-up scheduled at the moment of interest, and no collector forgotten between shows.
Sell-through, margin after split, cost of a show. Managers who can defend a programme with numbers get promoted.
Being the person who can migrate a broken spreadsheet stack into a real system is a career accelerator.
The fastest way to demonstrate operational competence is to have already run the workflows. Create a workspace, catalogue a set of works, log a consignment and model a commission split.
A gallery manager runs the operations of a commercial gallery: inventory and consignments, exhibition logistics, collector relationships and follow-up, invoicing and shipping, artist liaison, staff rotas, and the reporting the director uses to make programming decisions. In a small gallery the role also covers front of house and social media.
Ranges vary widely by city and gallery size. Assistant and coordinator roles commonly sit at the entry end, managers in mid-size commercial galleries in the middle, and directors of sales at established galleries considerably higher, often with commission on sales. Always confirm current local ranges against live postings rather than relying on a static figure.
Most postings ask for a degree in art history, fine art, arts management or a related field, plus one to three years in a gallery, auction house, museum or art fair. Practical proof matters more than the degree: inventory you have maintained, shows you have installed, sales you have closed.
Gallery management and inventory systems, a CRM, invoicing and basic accounting, image handling, and a mailing platform. Being the person who can clean up a broken inventory system is one of the fastest ways to become indispensable.
Take ownership of a system nobody else wants to own — the inventory, the consignment tracker, the collector database — and make it reliable. Learn to run an exhibition end to end. Build direct relationships with collectors so sales are attributable to you.
Sector job boards, gallery and museum career pages, art-fair networks, and word of mouth within the local gallery scene. Our art gallery jobs page lists where to look and how postings are typically worded.
Set up a workspace, run the workflows, and talk about them like someone who has done the job.
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