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Every gallery representation deal should be sealed by the signing of that consignment agreement so both sides have the rules in place right at the beginning. I have two personal stories to relate. The first one involved a gallery that asked me to lend them one of my portraits for the purpose of showing a prospective client. Sounds simple enough. I did have him sign a consignment agreement, even though the painting was to be in the gallery just a few days. A week later, I received a panic call from the gallery owner that he and all the tenants of the building had been locked out of their rented spaces. The building owner had wanted everyone to move out as he had received a wonderful offer to buy the old building, demolish it and a condominium complex was to be erected. But first he changed all the locks on the doors, with all the artists’ works captured inside. He announced he was going to take all the paintings to auction as he claimed the gallery owed him money and he would be reimbursed by selling the artwork. Immediately, I sent my consignment agreement to my lawyer, who sent it to the building owner’s lawyer. It stated that the gallery owner did not own my painting and it could not be used by a creditor. Only two artists had bothered to have their agreements signed and only two of us were able to retrieve our artwork.
I was lucky the first time………..but I wasn’t lucky the second time! I had been in a gallery for many many years…….long before I learnt about consignment agreement. We had a friendly handshake many years ago and I had never sent anything to the gallery to have signed. On a whim one day, I checked to see if I had any listings on google besides my website. Surprise!…..I was listed on a site for auction results and one of my paintings from that gallery was on the site. The photo was hardly discernible as one of my paintings…….and it was listed for less than a quarter of the prices charged by the rest of my representative galleries……..but there was my name. I quickly contacted the gallery and they explained that almost 9 months before they had had a bad flood and sewage backup and several of my damaged paintings had been picked up by the insurance company and they were waiting for payment. So if the regular consignment agreement had been signed, it would have stated that I owned the painting , it was consigned to the gallery, a third party could not sell it without notifying me, all restoration would only be done by me and I would be paid the retail price of the painting in case of damage or theft. The painting was so badly damaged, I certainly didn’t want it sold in less than pristine state. Smaller auction houses I have found out, really do believe in ‘buyer beware’……but it does reflect back to the artist and the physical quality of their work. There has been no happy resolution to this episode……..but no paintings now leave my studio without either a bill of sale or an consignment agreement. I no longer trust handshakes in the art business.
If you are looking for samples to be able to modify to suit your work, I suggest looking at the
website…….
http://www.enchantedcreek.com/Art/Contracts/artist-gallery.html
http://www.lawforart.com/resources/art_consignment.pdf
http://artmarketing.com/downloads/Consignment agreement.pdf
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