Artist Contracts and Consignment Agreements Explained

A gallery offers to show your work, you say yes with relief, and weeks later you realize you never actually found out what happens if a piece is damaged, who set the price, or how long the gallery can hold your work before you're entitled to get it back. The agreement you didn't read is the one you're now living under.

A note before the details: this is general guidance, not legal advice. For anything high-value or unusual, have a lawyer look at the actual contract.

What consignment actually is

You keep ownership of the work while the gallery holds and shows it; the gallery acts as your agent and takes a commission only when a sale happens. Ownership never transfers until the sale is complete — which is the whole reason this distinction matters in a dispute, a gallery bankruptcy, or an unpaid invoice. A clear agreement covers six things, and if all six are written down and understood, most of the trouble that follows never happens.

The six terms to nail down before you sign

1. Commission split. Fifty-fifty is traditional; sixty-forty in the artist's favor is common, and higher shares exist for in-demand work. Know the number, and know whether it applies to the full retail price or only the amount above some threshold.
2. Who sets the retail price. Insist you set it, with the gallery as a partner rather than the authority. A gallery that controls pricing can discount at will — and a discount comes out of your share in practice even when it's technically split.
3. The consignment period. Usually three to twelve months. Avoid open-ended terms entirely; you want a defined end date so you can retrieve the work if the relationship isn't working.
4. Insurance responsibility. Confirm the gallery insures consigned work at its retail value and can produce a certificate on request. If it won't insure consigned pieces, the agreement should say so plainly rather than leave it ambiguous.
5. Payment terms. State how soon after a sale you're paid — commonly within thirty days — and require the gallery to identify which piece sold and at what price.
6. Return of unsold work. A set time after the consignment period ends, at whose cost, and an explicit clause that your work isn't part of the gallery's assets if it closes or fails.

Why "net to you" is the number that matters

If a piece is priced at two thousand dollars and the gallery takes fifty percent, you receive one thousand — and that has to cover materials, studio time, and everything else that went into making it. Price with that arithmetic from the start, the same net-first thinking that should already be shaping how a print gets priced in the first place; don't let a flattering retail number distract from a thin net.

The exclusivity clause deserves its own read

A gallery wanting to be the sole venue for a specific series in your local market is a reasonable ask. Exclusivity across your entire practice, every city, every medium, almost never serves your interest — narrow the scope explicitly to a body of work, a geography, and a time window before you sign anything broader than that.

Red flags, in order of severity

No written agreement at all. Ownership transfer disguised in favorable-sounding language (meaning the gallery is buying, not consigning). Discounts granted without your knowledge. Payment only on sale, with no reporting of which piece sold or for how much. Blanket exclusivity. A refusal to show an insurance certificate for valuable work. Any one is a reason to slow down; several together are a reason to walk — and a reason to reconsider whether this is even the right gallery to have approached in the first place.

Protecting yourself, cheaply

• Keep a signed agreement for every consignment, even with a gallery you trust completely.
• Maintain your own inventory list — images, dimensions, prices — for everything a gallery holds.
• Record the delivery date and who signed for the work on their end.
• Ask for the certificate of insurance up front, not after something goes wrong.
• Keep your own sales records so a gallery's report is something you confirm, not something you take on faith — the same self-reliant record-keeping that matters whether you're dealing with a major institution or one of the small spaces where most artists actually start.