A Long, Strange Trip Through the New York Gallery Scene

0:01Jack Hanley:At the end, it was$17 ,000 when I was in Tribeca, which is a big chunk for a little gallery. I think that that makes things more conservative. If you know you have this bill at the end of every month or beginning of every month.

0:21I'm Kate Brown, and this is The Art Angle, a podcast from Artnet News.

0:30Last year, Jack Hanley, one of New York's most beloved and idiosyncratic gallerists, announced he would close his gallery after 37 years in business. The news landed with both surprise and sadness. Hanley has always been a disruptor, a dealer with a sharp eye for fresh talent, who followed instincts over market logic, and a gem of the New York art scene. Over the decades, Hanley gave early shows to artists like Gunther Fogg, Christopher Will, Sophie Kall, and Christian Marclay. And all of that was long before these people became art world names that they are now. He also helped define the San Francisco scene of the 1990s, championed artists who blurred lines between high and low, and made challenging work.

1:08And more recently even gave the digital artist Beeple his first ever gallery show. As a former Grateful Dead roadie, an orchid grower, an art fair founder, and having run galleries in several cities in the US, he's seen a lot, and he's played music with more than a few art dealers. Hanley joins me to discuss transformation and continuity in the art industry, and we talk about what's changed, what hasn't, what keeps art interesting, even as the market grows increasingly absurd. Hi, Jack. Thanks for joining me on The Art Angle today.

1:36Jack Hanley:Hi. So it's been a year since you closed. What's a day like for you these days? I mean, I stay pretty close to where the gallery was, so that part's not different in terms of getting lunch. But the rest of the day, I mostly take care of my orchids, or I go out east where I've been painting. You were painting at the beginning of your career in the art world as well, is that right? Yeah, I had gone to grad school at Berkeley. And then I was like the TA for Joan Brown there. And then I got teaching jobs. That's how I ended up in Austin, Texas to teach and started a little gallery there. Right. So yeah, maybe you can plot this out a little bit more.

2:14When did selling art become a viable idea for you?

2:17Jack Hanley:It took a while. I'm not even sure if it was viable. But so I was teaching in Austin and I would always tell my students that they should go to New York and see this show or go to LA and see this show. And then I realized they really kind of weren't going to be traveling too often to either spot. And so I opened a little space for$400 a month and started asking friends if they'd come. They could stay with me in Austin. We could go hear music and they could have a show, put up some stuff you maybe wanted the show but never did it so there are a lot of works on paper some of the people were down there like peter saul did a show twice people like that that were teaching it wasn't a big plan of mine to open a gallery i mean i went to galleries but it wasn't the part of the art world i was really that interested in anyway i drove past this space that was for rent for like a year and i asked them and it was$400 a month.

3:16Jack Hanley:And I just thought I could do this. And then I just started asking people if they'd do a show or curate a show or something, but it was a small space. Because you were on the road with the Grateful Dead for a while. And I know music has always been really important to you. What inspired you to really commit to the art world in the way that you did? Because it doesn't really have the immediacy that music does. How do those two worlds sort of overlap for you if they do at all? Well, you know, I painted, so I liked the contemplative part of being alone in my studio. So that was kind of similar to the gallery, you know, pretty low key.

3:52Jack Hanley:It would be crowded for the opening until the keg ran out. Amazing. Then it would be pretty quiet the rest of the month in Austin. So it kind of gave me a bit of time to like think out some of the detail parts. So you ran a gallery in multiple cities, over many decades. And, you know, I'm curious as you're looking back on it now, what do you think was the most difficult part about running a gallery? Getting comfortable talking to collectors was one. Worrying about money, I guess. I mean, I wanted to show whoever I wanted to show, so that kind of wasn't always commercially viable, but sometimes over the long haul it was.

4:33Jack Hanley:But, I mean, it was pretty solitary, you know, like in Austin at least. When I moved to San Francisco, there were more people came. I mean, a lot more people in the openings would be really crowded and we'd have a band there. So you worked with, you know, as you just mentioned, many artists that maybe weren't commercially viable when you first started out. And that's certainly something that you're known for, you know, spotting talent early on. But many of the artists that you worked with, I mean, even Peter Saul, as you just mentioned, went on to become extraordinarily successful. I'm curious what you made of that in general, you know, like some of these artists became these secondary market stars.

5:07And I'm curious how you've watched and witnessed and experienced these prices going up over the decades of artists that you've worked with, that you still continue to work with, but just artists that maybe you know you work with and then watch them rise to the stars.

5:21Jack Hanley:I mean, I was always pretty conservative about raising the prices. If they had a notion themselves, or usually if they had another gallery, the gallery would be complaining that they needed to raise the prices because their overhead was high or something. Yeah, I was always uncomfortable with that part. I thought when maybe their work isn't popular, it's going to be really hard for them if the prices are dangling at a high level or something. How did you witness that change over the years? Because of course, you've been through many different cycles of the market, including some big bubbles, but also, you know, in recent years, it's been quite difficult.

5:56Jack Hanley:Well, partially I would go to art fairs. I went to a lot of small art fairs and artists run projects that were something like an art fair in Cologne. I went to Cologne a lot. So I think some of the works that I didn't have collectives for, I could put in a suitcase and bring it to London or Cologne or somewhere and sell them relatively easily. So that sort of supported it. I started doing fairs in the U.S., in New York and so forth, but I mostly like going to Cologne, you know, in the 80s. I was reading somewhere an anecdote that you had from Cologne about Daniel Buchholz was selling, was it a perfume in his booth that made people fall in love or something?

6:41Jack Hanley:Yeah, I have a kid from that project. Seriously? Seriously. How did that go down? you mean with the kid no like so can you speak a bit about that project because i think it's also i liked the story about this what it sounded like an experimental booth because it's indicative of a very different time where a project like that would be at an art fair at all yeah i mean this fair was really great it was in an old deutsche bank i guess it was between being renovated or something this woman that i ended up having a kid with heika kempkin was the one who ran it and organized it. She invited me to come.

7:23Jack Hanley:I think Christian Nagel and a bunch of other people were on her Lord group. So I just brought a bunch of works that I could put in my suitcase and went. And it was pretty good. Karsten Holler gave me this little vial to sell for$80 that was like a glass vial with a little stopper on top. And you were supposed to sniff it and it would make you fall in love. And so I mostly had that on my table and I guess sniffed it a bunch. Amazing. It's interesting too, because you were touched on having gone to a lot of art fairs. I didn't even really realize that these experimental formats were always existing.

8:04I thought that a lot of these alternative art fairs came around in recent years with this, we kind of diagnosed this art fair malaise as a new thing, but this alternative art fair was back in the 90s, it seems like there was always this satellite fare dynamic.

8:19Jack Hanley:I mean, I don't know if there always was, but I think you're right. There was for a long time. The people that organized the unfair had worked for other fairs and projects and so forth. And so they were just a little bit more alternative anyway, I think. But there were these fairs all around, which I kind of gravitated to, which weren't that easy to sell work at, but they were still interesting and you'd get to network with a lot of people that were interesting. The unfair, which is what the name was in Cologne, was a little bit offshoot of doing the Gramercy Park fair and the hotel, you know, in Gramercy.

8:53Jack Hanley:The same group of people, I think, had an interest in that. What was the last fair that you did? And did it somehow inform your decision to close the gallery? I know it was a complex choice, but I wondered if you noticed any big changes in the fairs in recent years. Well, as the fairs get more expensive, they also look at more conservative because I think people can't afford to make a mistake and swallow$30 ,000 or whatever they're putting up probably more. So by the nature of them getting more expensive, it makes it more conservative. I mean, not a hundred percent, but it pushes it in that direction away from it being more experimental.

9:30Right. You're not bringing a vial of love perfume to sell for$80 when you got to pay$30 ,000. Among some of the issues that have emerged over the years, I know that some of the artists experienced more success. Some of them did get poached from your gallery in some cases. And that's something you once said that you avoided in San Francisco, but that became quite an issue when you moved to New York. Maybe you could speak about that transition, your move from San Francisco to New York and how the business model changed in that time.

10:04Jack Hanley:Well, in San Francisco, there were some galleries that were considered good galleries, but they were, I would say, pretty mainstream or they had maybe a stable of 10 artists. Pretty much that was what they showed. I mean, I had a lot of friends in the art world out there, but it seemed like there wasn't any kind of an underground arts theme like there was with music, for instance. So it seemed to me when I got to New York and originally opened a space on Watt Street, I mean, I was living in the loft in the back of the gallery in New York. The shows were kind of alternative there because the rent was$4 ,000.

10:42Jack Hanley:But it seemed to me as soon as I moved, the rents had gone way up until like at the end, it was$17 ,000 when I was in Tribeca, which is a big chunk for a little gallery. I think that that makes things more conservative if you know you have this bill at the end of every month or beginning of every month. And as you said, it puts pressure on to drive up the prices of art because that really affects your margins. Yeah. So it wasn't just my landlord or my space. I think everybody I knew was kind of dealing with the same thing. And some of them were pretty successful, given artists or two, but as soon as either the market changed or the popularity of artists changed because of a new body of work or whatever, it seemed like it could really leave you hanging unless you had some outside source of money, I guess.

11:32What do you think could be done about artist poaching? Is there some change that you wish you could sort of have implemented into the art business to prevent that?

11:41Jack Hanley:I would have liked that. I mean, it happened in music, but there were musicians and bands that I knew that stuck with the same manager and record company and so forth for many years. So I don't think it was specific to art as much as I think people started seeing the art world as a lucrative feel where you could make money or something. I didn't ever go into it thinking I was going to make money, which is what happens. I think it's tricky. You know, people go into similar businesses for sometimes unsimilar reasons. Right. And I think expectations from artists have also changed over the decades too, right?

12:22I'm sure just as some dealers were not going and expecting to make a bunch of money, artists didn't used to expect to make so much money. And some of them really do now, although that might be changing with the recent tumultuous couple of years we've had. Have you noticed attitudes from artists change over the years in that sense as well? They expect, you know, to be able to buy a house pretty quickly or whatever? Definitely.

12:42Jack Hanley:Some of the artists I was really pretty good friends with, and they felt bad about leaving and going to a big gallery, but it didn't make them think, maybe we should just hang here for another year as we slowly raise the prices or something. I'm not saying it's a mistake that they wanted a house and normal stuff, but it just seems to me that it was a noticeable change. I'd say after the 80s, maybe after the beginning of the 90s. All I know is when I moved back from San Francisco to New York, in San Francisco, there weren't many galleries that were even interested in the art I was showing. So I didn't have a lot of competition in that regard at the time.

13:25Jack Hanley:Whereas in New York, there's like so many galleries that there's always somebody that has more money or more space or more connections, much more competitive.

13:52How do collectors' expectations and attitudes fit into that when it comes to art and value? Like, what did you notice about that changing over the decades?

14:02Jack Hanley:Initially, the core of collectors that would buy work for me were kind of conceptual-oriented people. Maybe they wanted it to look nice in their house, but they had an expanded sense of what looking nice in the house might be. And I think constant press about the art world seemed to be about prices at auction, things like that, which start, I think, to filter into people thinking that they can get good art or a conceptual good piece, but it can still increase in value. They can maybe use it for something else. And, you know, in the 80s or in the middle of the 80s somewhere, I think the art world started getting a lot of press relating to popularity of certain artists and the prices they were getting.

14:46Jack Hanley:And I think that starts to play on in the background and you start to think you can get a good piece of work and maybe make some money on it. And it seemed to me that the collectors were sort of different all of a sudden than the ones that were early on collecting. A little bit more market savvy. Yeah, well, speculating, right? Yeah, obviously there was a diverse range, but I don't think that means when they're speculating that they're just interested in monetary value or something, but it was a big part of considering work. Did you ever have to deal with the secondary market over the years, and how did you manage that?

15:25Jack Hanley:Well, sometimes somebody would give me a work back to either trade on a new piece or they would just have some pressing problem that they needed some money, But I didn't really do that much of that. But all of a sudden, somewhere in the 80s where the auctions became sort of popular in general, I think people started thinking they could just put it at auction and maybe clean up. In the pandemic, there was again, you know, another bubble. A lot of people made a lot of money. And then, of course, that's tapered off quite a bit in the last few years. And there's been a wave of closures all over the place, but also quite a few in New York as well.

16:00Do you think that there's a silver lining there at all in the sort of cooling off of the market and what it does to maybe bring back some experimentation again in art if people are like decoupling it from big numbers, especially in the emerging and mid-range? Yeah.

16:16Jack Hanley:One problem, though, I think that young artists have expectations that are linked to what was happening when they were in art school. And they would hear about someone graduated and two years later, they bought a house. And then they would start to think, not in a bad way, but they would just start to think that they can have a career with being intellectually grounded and make money to buy a loft in Brooklyn. It seemed like there was an expansion of that where I'd say 10 years, 20 years before that, people might have dreamed about owning a place in Brooklyn, but they weren't thinking that it was going to happen maybe next year.

16:54Jack Hanley:So there was more of an integration of commercial things. I'm not saying that that made the artist not a good artist, because they're kind of unrelated to a large degree, but I just think that it made it different. Yeah, certainly. And once your friend has a nice loft, you know, and you're like living in the back of a UPS truck, I think then it starts to spread to that people want to have that too, you know, sort of see themselves as a group that came up at the same time. Speaking a bit about some highlights of your program, of which there are many, but some more recent ones that caused quite a stir is you gave Beeple one of his first gallery shows.

17:32Could you explain how this came about and how this sort of fit into the instincts that you had as a dealer?

17:40Jack Hanley:I didn't really follow digital artwork. I can't think of the name of the woman, but somebody just asked me if I'd meet people and talk to them. I had heard of him, and so I said, sure, but it's not like I had some big interest in digital work. But I thought he was really smart and interesting when I talked to him. So I thought it was worth thinking about doing the project. And then it kind of came together. I mean, I still had doubts about certain aspects of it, but I liked him and I liked the work enough that I thought it was worth doing it. I knew it was kind of a one-off anyway, so I didn't think it would sell.

18:18And it sold out.

18:19Jack Hanley:Yeah, so that in the end really helped out where I didn't know anybody that had ever asked me, do you have any digital work? So I had no notion that it would be popular at all, really. Was it popular with the collectors that you'd known, or was it a whole new demographic of people that kind of showed up interested to buy? Well, both. We sold everything. The people that bought work that I knew were probably a quarter or a third, maybe. Then the rest of them were people that, it wasn't so much that they were into the fad of it, but they were kind of serious about digital work. It was like a whole other crew.

18:57There was some overlap there, but I think it had been popular.

19:02Jack Hanley:He sold some piece at Christie's or Sotheby's and had gotten attention for being, I don't know, gazillion dollars or something. And I think there were a couple of people that called because of that. Yeah, well, I think it fits into the story of your gallery in a really interesting way because you are always known as a gallery that did a disruptive program that you always followed your instincts. And often some of the artists were not heard of in the traditional sense of the art world when they started out. Yeah, he's a smart guy and he's really nice. And so it was not difficult to deal with him at all.

19:40Mm-hmm. So, you know, you decided to close the gallery at the end of last year, and you said it was mostly because of the rent changing. As you mentioned, the rent keeps going up in New York all the time. But was there any other period over the decades where you just thought, I don't feel like doing this anymore? I can't do this anymore.