Ceri talks with Lisa Cooley, a former New York gallerist turned art advisor. Lisa shares how she went from being an accidental gallery worker to running her own acclaimed Lower East Side gallery for nine years. With remarkable honesty, she discusses the challenges of managing a gallery through a recession, the toll on mental and physical health, and the complexities of artist-dealer relationships. Now working as an art advisor and launching a new podcast called Oko, Lisa gives her experiences and thoughts on relationship building, collecting, and navigating the art world's unspoken rules.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Throughout her career, Lisa discovered that running a gallery wasn't just about selling art; it required building genuine human connections that couldn't be scaled or rushed, even as the art world grew increasingly commercial.
• Lisa developed a unique approach to evaluating artwork, insisting on both an intellectual response and visceral visual pleasure, refusing to compromise on either aspect when choosing artists to represent.
• After closing her gallery, Lisa learned that being honest about failures and challenges - though often discouraged in the art world - ultimately led to deeper, more meaningful professional relationships.
• Through difficult experiences with artists, Lisa came to understand that gallery-artist relationships work best when treated as business partnerships, allowing for clearer boundaries and communication.
• Lisa's experience running her gallery during the 2008 recession taught her that sometimes working harder isn't the answer.
• When Lisa's health began suffering from overwork, she made the difficult but necessary decision to close her gallery, learning that physical and mental wellbeing must take precedence over art world pressures.
• As an art advisor, Lisa discovered that building collector relationships requires a 4-6 month period that's less about art education and more about understanding how people communicate and make decisions.
• Lisa found that small, thoughtful gestures, from handwritten notes to carefully chosen chocolates, often proved more effective in building lasting business relationships than grand gestures or aggressive sales tactics.

BEST MOMENTS

"Being candid is highly, highly punished, and I think it's only now with a lot of distance where I really feel comfortable trying to share as much as possible." 

"The gallerist-artist relationship is not a marriage. It is not family. It is a business relationship... A marriage is very different. It's reciprocal. And gallery-artist relationships are frequently not reciprocal."

"Sometimes galleries just aren't that supportive..."

"You can scale everything in the art world... but you can't scale the human relationships. That's impossible to scale."

EPISODE RESOURCES

IG @lisacooleynyc

www.lisacooley.com

www.ask-oko.com

PODCAST HOST BIO

With over 30 years in the art world, Ceri has worked closely with leading artists and arts professionals, managed public and private galleries and charities, and curated more than 250 exhibitions and events. She sold artworks to major museums and private collectors and commissioned thousands of works across diverse media, from renowned artists such as John Akomfrah, Pipilotti Rist, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer and Vito Acconci. Now, she wants to share her extensive knowledge with you, so you can excel and achieve your goals.

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