First thing, browse the newly designed website for the Jackson Square Art and Antiques Dealers Association.
Whingeing about the fate of the art and antiques venues worldwide is an essential but hardly a favorite topic, despite the numbers of times this has been the subject of my blog. The nature of the trade, with requisite expertise in buying stock and selling settled in only one or two individuals, necessarily limits nearly all dealers to the ranks of small business. Indeed, given the type of material that some dealers sell, to whom they sell it, and where they sell it makes it appear they are big players. The where they sell it, now and recently, has become a real problem. The competition from mass market luxury goods manufacturers, mainly in the world of fashion, increases rents in a number of what were traditionally the best art and antiques venues. That a retailer that yields more in turnover can afford to pay more rent is certainly not a surprise. I hesitate to cite any figures, but let us safely assume that the fashion retailers’ inventory turnover of 4 times a year is considerably more than that of the best art and antiques dealers. Moreover, no dealer could ever sell that quickly, as, unless he’s planning to go about of business, he could never as quickly obtain replacement stock.
We have heard the argument made that higher traffic retailers do just that, bring more trade into the neighborhood and presumably more foot traffic into adjacent, established galleries. Not likely. The numbers of buyers for the $5,000 couture evening frock are far inestimably more numerous than those for the six or seven figure antique or work of art. For us, no question about it, what brings in traffic that are more than just browsers are the dealers that are nearby. The notion of a crossover buyer that does not exist between luxury mass marketer and gallery exists in spades between galleries.
All this was brought to mind reading a little squib about the tax increases felt most significantly by a small group of antiquarian booksellers in a small but centuries old venue in London’s West End. With all of them small in size and individually owned, they are an easier target for any sort of predation than a large, publically held company that can afford to fight back- or, more likely, give pause to anyone that sought to pick them out as a financial target. In the case of London specifically and the UK generally, there is an awareness that art and antiques venues constitute an important part of the nation’s cultural heritage, and there is a movement afoot to provide some sort of protection, including tax relief, to allow dealers to afford to carry on in business. Hopefully this effort will bear fruit before it’s too late. Even for those who can financially afford to carry on, we’ve seen too often in the last few years that sometimes it is just a matter of a much-harried dealer throwing in the towel.
Whether it is Bond Street in London, the Quai Voltaire in Paris, or Jackson Square in San Francisco, and we can all name plenty of others, venues form a fascinating part of the urban landscape and, local government take note, should be cherished.