01When a Gallery Owns the Right to Sell
A representation agreement is, at its core, a contract about geography and exclusivity. The gallery does not usually own the work — but it does own, for a defined period, the right to sell it. Understanding what that right covers, and where it ends, explains more about gallery behavior than almost anything else in the primary market.
Exclusivity is almost always territorial. A gallery in London might hold exclusive representation for the United Kingdom, or for Europe, or simply for the UK and Ireland. A New York gallery might hold North America. The same artist can therefore be simultaneously represented by several galleries in different regions, none of them in conflict — provided the territories are cleanly drawn and the galleries have agreed, usually among themselves, on how to handle sales that cross the line. A collector in Dubai who walks into a London booth and buys a work: whose sale is it? The answer is in the agreement, or it is a dispute.
The territory clause matters because galleries do not just hang work — they invest in an artist's market, sometimes for years, building relationships with institutions, placing work with the right collectors, managing the pace of supply. If a rival dealer in an adjacent territory can sell freely into theirs, that investment is exposed. Exclusivity protects the gallery's ability to recoup what it has spent. Without it, a gallery has little incentive to do the slow, unglamorous work of building a career.
Primary market agreements vary in formality. At the blue-chip end — Hauser & Wirth, Gagosian, David Zwirner — representation is documented with precision: territory, duration, commission rate, which bodies of work are included, and what the artist may sell independently from the studio. At the emerging end, arrangements are often verbal, or confirmed by a single email, which creates predictable problems. The obligations feel symmetrical until they are not.
02When It Ends
Artists leave galleries. Sometimes amicably — a larger gallery makes an approach, the artist's career has outgrown the relationship, both parties agree. More often there is friction, because the agreement governs not just future sales but the stock already on consignment. Works held by the gallery at the time of departure may be sold out during a wind-down period, or returned; the agreement should say which. If it does not, the artist may find their own work in a gallery's storage for years, technically available for sale to collectors the artist no longer has a relationship with.
The question of work sold after departure but placed before it — a collector who holds a work and later resells — falls under secondary market rules and the gallery has no continuing claim. But primary sales that were in progress when the relationship ended can be contested. Whose commission applies to a sale that was negotiated under the old arrangement but invoiced after the split? Again, the agreement should say. Often it does not.
Exclusivity clauses sometimes survive the agreement itself, prohibiting the artist from signing with a competitor in the same territory for a defined period. These non-compete provisions are common and enforceable in most jurisdictions, though their length varies. Twelve months is typical; longer is not unusual with major galleries whose investment has been substantial.
What an artist or advisor should read carefully, then, is not just the commission rate but the territory definition, the duration, the wind-down provision, and what happens to consigned stock on exit. Consignment agreements are the underlying documents most people never read until something goes wrong. By then, the terms are no longer negotiable.
Consignment is an independent publication about how the art market works. It is not a gallery, dealer, auction house, fair or advisory service.