m in the art business. I make my living as a writer (not just about art) and curator. And I lecture about the business of art. The mere mention of this topic evokes various responses from artists: one being horror that art could be considered a business proposition, that the maker is an entrepreneur and owner of a small business, that what he or she makes is a commodity. At the other end of the spectrum (where Andy Warhol and his like flourish), artmakers skillfully utilize marketing tools that have been carefully tailored to fit this market.

What might be called a marketing brochure in another industry is called an exhibition catalogue in the art world. Art is a consumer product unless it's therapy. (I suspect that it is not just coincidental that the concept for art for art's sake and the 19th-century romantic view of the artist barely predate Freud.) Until recently, art was always considered a commodity whether it was a fresco commissioned by the Church for an educational purpose, a portrait documenting the visage of the king or a wealthy burgher or a commemorative fountain sculpture for the town square. Today we call that design, and while we might value it highly in monetary terms (corporations pay thousands of dollars for the design of their annual reports and brand identities), we place a higher (dare I say moral?) value on art.

I have great respect for design (no, this is not about fine art versus design) because I think the challenges faced by designers are far greater - and certainly different - from those addressed by fine artists. Not only do designers have to create something visually pleasing, it also has to fulfill a function, be durable and be produced economically (not necessarily cheaply). Fine artists face similar challenges. First the work must succeed on the aesthetic level but also intellectually (unless it's merely intended to be eye candy). And the artist must bring his/her work to the public through whatever channels are appropriate and accessible, anywhere from the street to the Metropolitan Museum. Commercial galleries occupy a large and vital part of that continuum.

Instead of the artist being dependent upon a patron - as today's designers are on clients - contemporary artists are free to create and then try to find someone to reward their brilliance, so they can pay their bills. Despite vastly decreased funding for artists, grants and fellowships still exist, but I find myself having become less supportive of such programs. I remember an article that appeared in the New York Press a number of years ago when governmental funding for artists was being eliminated. The writer argued that artists who make unsaleable work should not expect the government to subsidize it. The market should determine what gets made/seen, or else the artist should simply foot the bill him/herself.

I appalled myself that I agreed with the writer since it was such a conservative stance, an uncomfortable one for a knee-jerk liberal. After all, the counter-argument usually put forward is that the marketplace tends to be conservative and work that is cutting edge and difficult would not be made without governmental or philanthropic support. But the history of art seems to refute the counter-argument since museums are filled with work made, well, for marketplace reasons. Just one example - Rembrandt's The Night Watch was paid for by the company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq, who were also the men depicted in this bravura painting.

Today, galleries presenting work made speculatively, as self-expression, have replaced the patronage system. They offer a venue for sales that support artists' lives and work, but galleries also perform other useful and supportive tasks as most of the people who enter them don't expect to walk out with anything but the experience. Galleries are also important because they can provide an early showing of new work since smart gallery owners are always on the look-out for fresh work. This, of course, is good business practice (not that collectors are always eager to take a chance on work by an unknown artist, mostly preferring to buy early, but not first). Galleries can be valuable testing grounds for new ideas even if they don't have the same mission as alternative spaces.

Galleries also provide a filter for other arts professionals. While I'm not prepared to say that none of the major art magazines or any of the country's premier museums have ever devoted an article or mounted an exhibition of an artist whose work had only been seen in the studio, I suspect that the few exceptions would prove the rule. Curators should trust their own eyes, but the reality is they do rely on galleries to do their preliminary looking. As a curator and writer, I rely on galleries' recommendations -as well as those given by artists - when I am researching an exhibition or article.

What has led me to recognize the value of the gallery system at this particular moment in time is an ongoing e-mail correspondence with a long-time friend, a mid-40-ish sculptor with a studio in Red Hook, forced out of Greenpoint by rising rents (read financially unsuccessful sculptor). The topic of our exchange has been how can he place in a prestigious museum collection a major sculpture that took him more than three years to complete. He's told me frankly that he doesn't want to even attempt to exhibit it in a commercial gallery, not that he knows of any clamoring for his work. He hasn't made enough sales from the gallery shows he has been in to continue focusing full-time on his work, and since he's been busy with making a living by doing other things, he has not been able to make a substantial body of work to evidence his seriousness. (The reasons are classic Catch 22 - not enough sales, not enough work.) He seems to disdain the gallery system and is willing to continue to make models to support what another artist friend of mine calls her "art habit." He's not interested in selling his sculpture to a private collector even should this person be on a museum board with the power to bestow it as a gift to the museum eventually.

But he also does not expect the museum to buy it either. His desire to place it in a museum is not even to enhance the value of his other work still in the studio or subsequent work - a strategy used very effectively by many other artists, and a fact curators recognize as a bargaining chip when they are cadging for the gift of a desirable work or rejecting one that is less attractive. This sculptor simply wants this work in a museum because he feels the context is more appropriate, on view or in the vault, than in a private or corporate collection.

He wants my help, and I'm at a loss. I know the curators of all of the institutions on the short list of his largess, and I could easily make a few phone calls to suggest they consider accepting this gift. In fact, one of these institutions recently sought my recommendations on expanding its collection. (My friend did not make my list of recommendations because he has produced so little work in recent years.) Still I believe that he is a good sculptor and that this work is a good example of his oeuvre. And it would make a good addition to any collection. (Yes, I know I keep saying "good" because that is what it is - neither more nor less.) No collection in the world possesses only masterpieces. They possess works which may have been given along with a more desirable one, or by a donor who couldn't be refused or, simply, the curator made a mistake in judgment.

But "good" may not be good enough, because this artist has ignored the business of art. Although he has had some gallery exhibitions, and has been included in a reasonable number of group exhibitions both in commercial and non-commercial spaces, and he has garnered some critical writing about his work, he has not focused on his career - on the business of his art - so his name rarely evokes much more than a "whatever happened to?" response. What has he been doing? Making a living, building a studio, making drawings that he prices out of the market, and struggling to complete this major work. Will the museums pass on this good work because paying the rent and eating were higher priorities for this artist than artmaking? Possibly. Probably. And will I make those calls to support the acquisition? Yes, because I think the work is good and should be preserved for posterity. It represents a particular aesthetic moment well.

But I do wish he would recognize that art is a business, and that treating it any other way ignores its history and its function, turning it into self-indulgence. Art that has survived over the centuries has never been purely self-indulgent.

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