Why the art scene is afraid of a word that lies at its core. And three habits that change it — for artists and for galleries.
I sit down with a small-gallery owner. We’re going down the list for an upcoming show: concept, work list, hang, curatorial text. Then I get to the fifth item on my list — promotion…marketing — and watch his face shift slightly. As if I’d suggested we hang a Coca-Cola sponsor banner above the Madonna.
“Isn’t that the curator’s job?” he asks.
No. It isn’t.
But what this essay really wants to say is: even if it were, the problem wouldn’t be solved. Because the word that made the gallerist wince — marketing — isn’t the problem. The problem is that, in 2026, his reaction is still common enough that we have to write about it.
There is a myth in the artworld that marketing is something that happens in other industries. Something that belongs to the world of advertising agencies, of companies that sell yoghurt, of Hollywood studios. We — curators, artists, galleries, museums — are above that word. We deal in art, and art doesn’t need marketing.
This is, to be direct, nonsense.
Botticelli as ad
In How to Think More Effectively (2020), the editorial collective at London’s School of Life makes one of those analogies that, once you’ve heard it, you can’t unhear:
“in order better to understand what art is for, we might draw an analogy between art and advertising. We might say that a painting by Botticelli is a kind of advert for tenderness.” [1]
And on the same page:
“many works of art are trying to persuade us of something rather than just pleasing us; they are trying to seduce us… By drawing an analogy with adverts, which we know to be in the selling game, we can become newly conscious of the more didactic sides to certain paintings.” [1]
Translated into practice: art has always been in the business of persuasion. Botticelli sells tenderness. Caravaggio sells catharsis. Marina Abramović sells vulnerability. The fact that no money changes hands at the moment of looking doesn’t mean a transaction isn’t happening — it just means the transaction is slower, subtler, and, to put it politely, often harder for either side to grasp.
If art is already in the persuasion business, then refusing marketing tactics and plans doesn’t mean your work will be pure, uncontaminated by the filth of publicity. It’s bad marketing. You’re still persuading — you’re just doing it badly, or not at all.
This isn’t a claim only the School of Life makes. Pavičić, Alfirević and Aleksić, in the standard Croatian-language textbook Marketing i menadžment u kulturi i umjetnosti (Marketing and management in culture and the arts), start from the same premise: marketing in cultural institutions isn’t an add-on; it’s the infrastructure without which the rest of the work, however brilliant, doesn’t reach its audience.[2] Philip Kotler, who in international literature is more or less synonymous with serious thinking about marketing, lands in the same place in Standing Room Only: the question for an arts organisation isn’t whether it does marketing, but how well or badly it does it.[3]
Two myths the artworld persuades itself of
Out of that “marketing isn’t for us” stance grow two myths that cost us.
Myth one: “good work speaks for itself.” It doesn’t. Good work needs translators — people who know how to set it in context, name it in the right language, get it in front of the right eyes and ears. Without that layer, the work sits in the room, and nothing happens to it. That’s not a failure of the work. It’s a failure of the surrounding infrastructure.
Myth two: “the curator handles it.” They don’t. Curatorial work and marketing work use different skills, different tools. The week before an exhibition opening, when a press release needs to go out to the media, the last thing the curator wants to be doing is writing copy for journalists — they have other work. And what most often happens at that point — and I’m saying this from direct experience — is that the curatorial text gets copy-pasted into a press release and sent out. That, dear gallerists, is not a press release. It’s an academic text in the wrong context, and the journalist deletes it a matter of seconds.
A press release and a curatorial text are two different kinds of writing, with different readers and different goals. I’ve written about the structure of a professional press release in detail in this Substack post: “The Professional Press Release Structure That Journalists Actually Use” — recommended for anyone who has ever thought “writing is writing”.
Three habits for artists
- Treat your bio and artist statement as something unique and characteristic of you. If your bio could be swapped out for the bio of any other artist of your generation, you didn’t write it for yourself — you wrote it for an abstract “serious artist” who doesn’t exist. More on that in the post on exhibition announcements: Writing Exhibition Announcements That Serve Multiple Editorial Needs.
- Build relationships with media before you need them. The worst time to email a journalist for the first time is the week before your opening. The best time is six months earlier, when you have nothing to ask for — only context, opinion, a heads-up. More here: Sustainable Media Relations for Cultural Institutions: A Practical Framework.
- Position yourself; don’t just describe yourself. “I work in painting” is not a position. It’s information. A position is why your work, why now, why for them. More in the post on cultural programming.
Three habits for galleries
- A press release is not a copy-paste of the curatorial text. Write it separately, with a different logic, for a different reader. If you don’t have the time or the energy, commission someone who does — but don’t send the curatorial text under another name.
- Marketing starts months before opening, not the week of. I’m currently helping plan a new small gallery, and the first decision we made together — before the programme, before the hang — was developing the marketing strategy. Not because marketing is more important than the programme. But because marketing is time, and time can’t be turned back.
- Recognise marketing as a separate skill — and budget for it. A gallery that has a budget line for lighting, install and opening but not for promotion is building a space where people will encounter emptiness. Technical execution without marketing execution is half a solution.
This is, to be open about it, part of what I do. At DLightful Services, we write press releases (fresh, not copy-pasted), build media strategies, and put a marketing calendar in place before anyone first visits your gallery’s website. If any of the above sounded familiar, get in touch at dora@dlightfulservices.com.
The gallerist at the start of this essay isn’t a bad person. He isn’t lazy. He isn’t even uninformed about how a gallery works. But he believed the myth that marketing isn’t for art — and that his job was to protect the institution from it.
Botticelli might’ve smirked at this.
Sources
[1] The School of Life. “How to Think More Effectively: A Guide to Greater Productivity, Insight and Creativity”. London: The School of Life, 2020. P. 105.
[2] Pavičić, Jurica, Nikša Alfirević and Ljiljana Aleksić. “Marketing i menadžment u kulturi i umjetnosti”. Zagreb: Masmedia, 2006. The standard Croatian-language textbook on the subject.
[3] Kotler, Philip and Joanne Scheff. “Standing Room Only: Strategies for Marketing the Performing Arts”. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2007.