art gallery rules

This is hilarious:

Other than on 57th Street or the Upper East Side, women should not wear couture when visiting galleries. Uptown, men should wear ties, but never in Chelsea, Soho, Tribeca, or Williamsburg; but guys, even artists, should never visit in workclothes or they will be asked by the 22 year-old socialite stationed at the front desk if they are making an art delivery or have come to fix the sink in the storage room. Students don’t have to worry, because no matter what they wear they always look like students. And of course no one should talk loudly (to oneself or to others) or wear discernable perfume or cologne.

Celebrities are allowed to visit only during the week; not on Saturdays, when they will distract from the art. The “celebrity bubble” used by a certain scion of a publication family does not work; he, his wife, her dog and at least one guest swan from gallery to gallery on Saturdays (!), limo somewhere offstage, thinking that the plastic dome they have imagined surrounding themselves is adequate sound-proofing. Just because you do no see or acknowledge other people does not mean they do not see you. Or hear you.

No cell phone use in galleries, please. Most galleries, I am told, have installed Cell-Kill, a device that senses activated cell phones  and silently and immediately fuses those little chips they have inside.

There are many more good tips, especially if visiting New York galleries, amusingly presented by John Perreault at Artopia.

June 16, 2005 in Art Exhibitions by Marja-Leena