Belated thanks are said to be better than none at all, so it is in that spirit that we express our gratitude to those who have, for decades, brought art to Concord.
Their passion and eye for beauty helped to create a culture that led to the public sculptures that challenge the mind and enliven Main Street. Thank you for all you’ve done for arts and the city Pam Tarbell, Mary McGowan and Sarah Chaffee. Thanks, too, to Robert Larsen, founder of the art gallery at the Sulloway & Hollis law firm, and to Katy Brown Solsky, founder of Concord’s summertime arts market. Thanks to all who struggle to maintain the Kimball Jenkins Mansion and art school, to those who host art exhibits in their businesses and to all left off this list who keep art alive in the city.
2018 sadly marked the closing of Concord’s two venerable full-time art galleries, McGowan Fine Art last summer and Tarbell’s Mill Brook Gallery last week. We couldn’t bring ourselves to ask the gallery owners for a post mortem during the holidays, but the bottom line is too few people were buying too little art.
The problem, we suspect, is one of both demographics and technology, and it is not a local phenomenon. Many galleries are struggling. The rate of new gallery openings fell by 87 percent over the past decade. Where five new galleries once opened for every one that closed, according to the website artfacts.net, the ratio is now less than one to one.
Members of the baby boom generation are downsizing, which means less floor space and fewer walls to display art. Few of them sell their art – one survey found that 86 percent of art collectors claim to never have sold a work. Instead, another survey found that 81 percent of art owners said they planned to leave their collections to their heirs. That diminishes the incentive of the inheritors, who these days typically live in smaller homes than their parents, to buy more art, since they lack the room to display what they already own.
Internet art sales are changing the marketplace. Instagram has become the go-to place to buy art for many millennials, which hurts brick-and-mortar galleries.
Galleries thrive when there are enough of them in one area to serve as a destination for browsers and buyers. They thrive in towns that draw large numbers of tourists and in big cities home to enough people with the means to regularly purchase art. Concord is not such a place, so what should a city that values art but can’t support a gathering of galleries do?
Our suggestion: Expand on the city’s Art on Main program (visitconcord-nh.com) and, with the help of Concord’s resident experts, make the city the gallery.
The sculptures displayed on Main Street are for sale and are more affordable than one might think. Public buildings should display art for sale and empty storefronts used for pop-up galleries. We don’t know what would have to change before Concord could again support at least a few art galleries, but we haven’t given up hope that one day it will again.