The Art Angle Podcast: How Much Money Do Art Dealers Actually Make?

Artnet News June 10, 2021 ShareShare This Article

Welcome to the Art Angle, a podcast from Artnet News that delves into the places where the art world meets the real world, bringing each week’s biggest story down to earth. Join host Andrew Goldstein every week for an in-depth look at what matters most in museums, the art market, and much more with input from our own writers and editors as well as artists, curators, and other top experts in the field.

We’ve all seen the movie with the glamorous art dealer, maybe a villain who lives in a cutting edge palatial home, drives an impressive car, speaks with an impressive and exceedingly hard-to-place accent…

That pretty much is the image of the art dealer in the popular consciousness, a sophisticated, suave, sexy, probably ruthless, strikingly dressed person who is conspicuously rich.

But how well does this image match up with reality? Recently Artnet News senior market reporter Eileen Kinsella teamed up with the ace investigative art journalist Zachary Small to find out just how much art dealers actually earn from their jobs. What they found is pretty surprising—maybe even shocking.

Their full report, which is available on Artnet News Pro is required reading for the art industry—and just as interesting as what they found is how they managed to get the information at all.

This week, Eileen and Zachary join Andrew Goldstein to discuss the vast discrepancies when it comes to salaries in the gallery world, and what it all means for the next generation of dealers and for the art world at large.