There’s a moment every year when the calendar starts to feel less like a calendar and more like a living organism.
Usually it happens around now, which also happens to be the busiest time in our personal lives with end of school and both our kids birthdays.
The current year is still unfolding — crates arriving, collectors asking for previews, artists suddenly deciding a piece they swore was finished actually needs “two more weeks” — while at the same time we’re already deep into planning the next year and cautiously peeking into the beginning of 2028.
From the outside, I think people imagine gallery scheduling as a neat little puzzle. You just slot artists into months and email invitations when the time comes.
If only.
In reality, planning exhibitions is a lot like herding cats.
Not in a bad way, necessarily. Cats are intelligent, independent, occasionally mysterious creatures with very strong opinions about what they will and will not do. Artists, unsurprisingly, share a few of those traits.
One artist is moving, another is swapping studios and has no idea when their new studio will be functional. Another is already committed to a museum show that will consume the next eighteen months of their life. Someone else thrives in a solo exhibition environment where the entire room can breathe around their work, while another artist’s paintings suddenly come alive only when paired with someone whose work pushes against theirs in just the right way.
Then there are artists who are incredible in group exhibitions but would hate the pressure of carrying an entire room themselves. Others can produce work endlessly but only if they aren’t given a deadline too far in advance. Some want two years to prepare. Some barely want two weeks.
And somehow, all of this has to become a coherent calendar. We're 20 year veterans at this point, so it's gotten easier but it's still a challenge.
Every year, the notes begin. Not glamorous notes either. Scribbled observations. Fragments from conversations at openings. Tiny reminders typed into a phone while walking to dinner after an Art Walk.
“Better in spring.”
“Needs a break after last solo.”
“Strong pairing with romantic work.”
“Collector base growing.”
“Needs larger space.”
“Probably not ready until 2028.”
“Never schedule during end of school.”
“Looking after parent.”
Over time, those notes become a strange kind of map. Not just of logistics, but of personalities, rhythms, ambitions, anxieties, and momentum.
Because galleries don’t simply schedule artwork. They schedule human beings.
And human beings rarely move in straight lines.
An artist may have a breakthrough year and suddenly need a larger stage than originally planned. Another may quietly disappear into experimentation for a while before emerging with work completely different from anything they’ve shown before. Life intervenes constantly — marriages, children, illnesses, relocations, burnout, inspiration, reinvention.
A good exhibition schedule has to leave room for all of it.
That’s the strange balancing act of long-term planning. You try to be organized enough to build meaningful opportunities while staying flexible enough to adapt when reality inevitably changes. We try to give the artists that can carry a solo, the opportunity every other year to have one or we pair them for a duet. This is the added piece of the puzzle that always gets tricky.
Sometimes the perfect pairing appears unexpectedly. Two artists who, on paper, make no sense together suddenly create sparks in a room. Sometimes two great artists feel like they are competing rather than harmonizing.
So much of gallery work exists in this invisible space before the public ever sees the finished show.
The audience experiences opening night.
We experience the many, many long conversations that made it possible.
And honestly, I love that part.
The spreadsheets, the notes, the endless rearranging of timelines — it can absolutely feel chaotic at times. But buried inside that chaos is something deeply hopeful. You’re looking at the future of artists you care about and trying to build the best possible path for their work to be seen. One of my notes last year just said, "She's ready."
Even if the process occasionally resembles trying to guide twenty highly intelligent cats through a thunderstorm while carrying a clipboard.
Still, every once in a while, it all clicks into place.
The right artist.
The right moment.
The right room.
And suddenly the chaos makes perfect sense. Stay tuned for what is sure to be a great year.
