Marketing Mondays: How Not to Get Reviewed

As artists we want opportunities to show, and we want our shows to be reviewed. A good review, written by someone familiar with our work or genre, can open new paths to the dialogue we hope to have with our audience, offering insights or comments that we might not have considered before. A good review can place our work within a larger esthetic context. Depending on the writer and the publication, a good review may even help create a place for us in the art world, or secure the place we already have. To that end, we provide the gallery or museum with a good selection of images, an up-to-date resume, and a clear, concise statement. Additionally we may engage an essayist for a catalog or work closely with a writer secured by the gallery or museum.

So what happens when the institution rolls boulders into the path of the reviewer?

That was my experience recently when I went to view and review, on assignment from a national magazine, the retrospective of a giant in the field of abstraction via the medium of fiber. For casual visitors, I’m guessing the show was a delight—all shimmering color and sensuous material in numerous galleries on two floors. For a reviewer, however, it was a nightmare.

As is often the case with Marketing Mondays, a personal experience gets turned into not just a cautionary tale but a commentary on how artists can begin to take control of a bad situation.

Here’s How Not to Get Reviewed

. Don’t allow photography in the galleries

. Don’t provide installation shots to the reviewer; in fact, don’t photograph the installation at all

. Don’t leave a press packet for the reviewer, as your PR person promised. That way, the reviewer can spend her most of her viewing time making a floor plan of the show and sketches of the individual works with the hope of matching the information to digital images that will be emailed at a later time

. When the reviewer finds a seat and takes out her pen again to organize the notes she has already made, have one of your guards rush over and say, “I’m sorry, pens are not allowed in the galleries. Have him offer her a yellow pencil with its point worn down to a nub
. Focus on the needs of your board of directors and on the lenders to the exhibition, and think of "press" as the release you send out, rather than of the working people who come to write about the exhibition 
. Ignore the fact that reviewers are typically freelancers who typically receive very little remuneration for their labor, which includes preplanning, getting to the institution (often in an unfamiliar geographic location), visiting the exhibition, writing a review and, often, securing images as well

To be fair, the gallery’s PR person did give me a book-length catalog, which I saw as the saving grace in this roundelay of don’t, don’t, don’t. When I sat to write, it was to make notes directly onto the catalog pages while the work was fresh in my mind, and while I had the opportunity to go back and check on anything I might have missed in the first round of note taking. But the no-pen fiat was the last straw. I left, vastly annoyed that I had wasted three hours and driven numerous miles on three-dollar-a-gallon-gas.
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Fortunately I have a wonderful editor who intervened with the gallery director to secure images of the artist's work. It takes a lot of stress and energy to be the squeaky wheel--and if you know me, you know I can squeak pretty well--but sometimes that's what it takes to get the grease.  Below, I offer some examples of "grease."
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What An Artist Can Do to Encourage Reviews

Communication for an exhibition starts not in the press office, but between the artist and the curator of the exhibition, ideally with the institution's director,  and certainly with the institution’s public relations person. Make sure reviewers will be welcomed and given the information they need.

. Ask the director: Must there be a no-photography policy? Is there room for flexibility here? Might press be given some leeway? (With few exceptions, if I can't shoot a show I don't write about it; the photos I take--including wall text and labels--allow me to take visual "notes" so that I can concentrate on thinking about the work, not the notetaking.)
. Make sure installation shots or a map of the gallery will be available to reviewers if the no-photos policy is rigidly enforced.  Ask the press office to send you images so you can see what will be available to reviewers.

. If you’re showing in a small institution that has no funds for photography, shoot the installation yourself (or have it shot) and make sure the PR person has digital images available. (DIY extends up and down the art world food chain.)

. Ask to see the press packet. Increasingly digital rather than hard copy, it should contain everything a reviewer needs to know about you and your work. Some of the information will come from the statement and resume you provide; some will be generated by the PR person. Check the PR person’s information for accuracy.

. Consider preparing a brief FAQ about you, your history, your materials or your working process. While art magazine writers and art bloggers can be assumed to know something about their subject, publications at the local level may send a general assignment reporter to write about your show. With that in mind, do what you can to make sure a writer understands the information. A smart PR person will welcome the information
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Add a Personal Touch

Even if the institution or gallery has sent out announcements, there’s nothing wrong with sending postcards directly to the local and regional critics and to the regional correspondents of the national art magazines.
. Add a brief handwritten note inviting them to the opening, or to view the show. If they have reviewed your work before, remind them of that, or let them know you follow their writing (but don’t lie and say you do if you really don’t). Many local/regional critics acknowledge that the personal note is often the thing that gets them to the exhibition, or to write about it

. Be prepared to supply a reviewer with any material or images they need. You don't need to worry about this for your retrospective at MoMA, but smaller institutions with smaller staffs simply may not be hitting all the notes
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Over to you: Have you missed out on a review because of an institutional or bureaucratic boulder? Bloggers and others: Have you not reviewed a show, or reviewed it with difficulty because of the situations I describe?  Anything else you'd like to add about the no-photo or no-pens policy? 


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