Working with art advisors: alliance or competition

01Who are art advisors

The art advisory profession has become increasingly structured over the past two decades, particularly in the United States and the United Kingdom. The most established advisors — Allan Schwartzman, who co-founded the art advisory service at Sotheby's before launching his own firm, Lisa Schiff, Thea Westreich and Ethan Wagner, or Sandy Heller — manage considerable acquisition budgets for leading collectors. In France, the profession is less formalised but growing, with professionals and structures that serve an increasingly diverse clientele.

Advisors operate at different levels. Some offer comprehensive strategic counsel: defining the collection's direction, identifying artists to follow, planning acquisitions over several years. Others specialise in execution: sourcing specific works, negotiating prices, managing logistics. The most complete combine both dimensions and effectively become artistic directors of private collections.

Advisor compensation varies. The most transparent model is the fixed fee or annual retainer, paid by the collector. The most common model remains the purchase commission, generally between five and ten per cent of the acquisition price, paid by the seller (the gallery) or the buyer, depending on the arrangement. This commission, when added to the dealer's margin, can significantly reduce a sale's profitability.

02The advisor as business generator

The principal advantage of working with an art advisor is access to collectors the gallery would not have reached alone. Advisors who work with wealthy collectors, family offices or corporate foundations command acquisition budgets that few galleries can generate through their own networks. An advisor who recommends a gallery artist to a collector with an annual budget of several hundred thousand euros represents a major commercial opportunity.

Galerie Kamel Mennour, Galerie Perrotin and Galerie Almine Rech regularly work with international advisors who place works by their artists in private and institutional collections worldwide. These collaborations require a trust relationship in which the advisor knows they will receive reliable information about work availability, pricing and the artist's trajectory.

A dealer who refuses to work with advisors forfeits a significant sales channel. The art market has evolved: the most active collectors no longer visit galleries without prior filtering. They rely on advisors to pre-select artists, identify works and negotiate terms. A dealer who does not integrate this reality into their strategy loses sales.

03The tensions in the relationship

The dealer-advisor relationship is not without friction. The first source of tension is the commission. When the advisor expects a ten per cent commission and the dealer's margin is fifty per cent on a work sold for ten thousand euros, the one-thousand-euro commission reduces the gallery's margin to forty per cent. On higher-priced works, this commission becomes a significant cost. Some dealers refuse to pay advisor commissions, considering that the referral role does not justify such remuneration.

The second tension concerns transparency. An advisor who does not reveal the final collector's identity to the dealer creates opacity that prevents the gallery from building a direct relationship with the buyer. The dealer then sells a work without knowing who owns it, complicating distribution tracking and invitations to future exhibitions. The most professional advisors are transparent about client identity while protecting their intermediary role.

The third tension concerns loyalty. An advisor who places a work by gallery A's artist with a collector, then proposes a work by a competing artist from gallery B to the same collector, creates a delicate situation. The dealer may feel the advisor is playing galleries against each other to secure the best terms.

04Building lasting partnerships

The key to a productive advisor relationship lies in reciprocity. The dealer brings quality works, reliable information and priority access to the most sought-after pieces. The advisor brings qualified collectors and rapid decision-making capacity.

Galleries that succeed in this relationship maintain a clear policy: they inform advisors in advance of new productions, offer preview access to works before the opening, and honour the agreed commission without seeking to renegotiate at each transaction. In return, they expect reasonable loyalty, transparency on sale conditions and smooth communication.

The dealer should also invest in the personal relationship with the advisor. A lunch, a studio visit shared with the artist, an invitation to a private event: these gestures maintain a relationship that transcends the transactional framework and encourages spontaneous recommendations. Marian Goodman Gallery is known for the quality of its advisor relationships, built over decades of collaboration and mutual trust.

05When the advisor becomes a competitor

It sometimes happens that an advisor exceeds their advisory role to become a market actor in their own right. Some advisors purchase works on their own account and resell them at a margin, becoming de facto dealers. Others systematically steer their clients toward galleries with which they have preferential agreements, to the detriment of galleries offering a stronger programme but less favourable financial terms.

The dealer must be vigilant about these practices. An advisor who demands excessive commissions, requires sales exclusivity or systematically conceals client identities is not serving the gallery's interests. The dealer must know how to set boundaries while maintaining a professional relationship.

For Artedusa partner galleries, the platform offers direct visibility among collectors that complements the work of advisors and maintains an independent sales channel, thereby reducing dependence on any single intermediary.