Michelle Gaugy, owner of Gaugy Gallery and a consultant to galleries around the country, took to Quora to dispel some myths about the art market. She spends a fair amount of time disabusing artists of some of their attitudes about exclusion but she also reminds us that there is a large and vibrant primary art market around the country producing signficant sales:

Here’s the deal: The problem when the different work fails is generally not the galleries. It’s public taste and public needs.

But artists tend to blame galleries and what they perceive as the gallery system. And I sometimes agree—the New York system is totally screwed. An artist could (and do) die before getting represented there unless he or she has a lover who owns a gallery or who will open one for him or her. That scene is totally about patronage and parties and fads. But there is a much larger country here, and it isn’t all Nashville, or tiny towns. And it is that that I am writing about, which is the bulk of the galleries in the U.S.—a lot of galleries, in a lot of cities, representing a lot of artists, selling a lot of art.

Artists and galleries: Why don’t artists like the current system? (Slate/Quora)