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Arts Organization Consulting
Strategic Growth
Serious Play advises galleries, museums, and nonprofits meet their goals with tailored consulting. Ivan Barnett partners with leadership to navigate the art market, balance creativity with sustainability, and deliver actionable solutions.
“Those who tell the stories rule the world.”
— Hopi American
Creative Consulting Benefits
Working with a consultant provides art organizations and galleries with clarity, guidance, and tools they need to make informed decisions and drive meaningful change. Some key benefits of Serious Play include:
Increased Efficiency
Through operational reviews, I help streamline processes, that lead to increased efficiency and reduced costs.
Enhanced Audience Engagement
Targeted marketing and audience development strategies help organizations reach wider audiences. This is to build stronger connections with their communities.
Financial Stability
Revenue diversification and financial planning ensure a more sustainable business model, reducing reliance on a single funding source.
Stronger Brand Presence
Effective branding and marketing allows your organization to differentiate itself in the market and attract patrons, visitors, and partners.
Improved Program Quality
My guidance in program and exhibition planning helps create impactful experiences. These efforts align with your organization’s mission and resonate with audiences.
Staff Development
By investing in staff-capacity building, your organization creates a more cohesive, motivated team ready to adapt to future challenges.
Your Roadmap to Financial Growth
For galleries and arts organizations, Serious Play consulting offers the opportunity to evaluate practices, refine strategy, and align with your mission. With Ivan Barnett’s guidance, you can achieve artistic and business goals, ensuring a future of creativity and stability. This partnership empowers you to grow sustainably and make lasting impact through tailored strategies that honor both the creative and operational sides of the art world.
“Don’t follow the crowd, let the crowd follow you.”
Consulting Services
For 25 years, Ivan Barnett directed and curated Santa Fe’s Patina Gallery, navigating creative and financial demands. Today, through Serious Play, he offers the support he once sought—strategic guidance to reinvent, innovate, and grow. His goal is to help galleries grow their audiences, inspire artists, and thrive in a competitive art world.
Exhibition Curation & Event Production
The pacing and timing of exhibitions and gallery events has a direct impact on your bottom line. How do you decide to feature an artist’s work and why?
Relationship Between Gallery & Clients
Are you tailoring your clients’ lists to reflect their financial impact on your gallery sales? Are VIP clients rewarded for their patronage?
Brand and Re-brand your Message
Is your gallery’s story intimate and personal enough to attract new clients and to retain existing ones? When was the last time you did a “gallery audit?”
Artist Relations
Artists need “care and feeding.” How are you doing this? Are you encouraging them to experiment with new works?
Advertising & Marketing
These areas are most often the most costly expenditures for a gallery. Is it time to refresh and evaluate your approach?
Collaborations & Partnerships
Partnerships with your community’s cultural organizations gives you a competitive edge and acts as a new storytelling opportunity to convert new clients.
Consulting Case Studies
These Serious Play case studies highlight Ivan Barnett’s work with artists and organizations, showing challenges, solutions, and results. Each demonstrates his ability to collaborate, motivate, and transform creative careers and institutions.
The Tension of Opposites Where Barnett Connected the Dots
This case study demonstrates how all the strategic planning came together, the artists, the photography, the opera opening, the jewelry when the gallery had their ground breaking opening of their historic exhibition, The Tension of Opposites. The synergy was a real testament to Ivan being able to connect the dots for this blockbuster.
Patina … Opening a Gallery that Defied the Odds
Patina Gallery beat incredible financial odds over the course of 25 years. The gallery was able to pivot and leverage operations, vision, and astute planning to weather many life-altering storms during that time and achieve global success.
Serious Play Testimonials
Ivan Barnett, former director of Patina Gallery, located in the competitive art scene of Santa Fe, New Mexico, found a way to stand out by creating unique experiences that go beyond traditional art openings. In collaboration with the Santa Fe Opera, he organized an event that blended art and opera, shifting the focus from selling art to engaging the community.
Pam Danziger, Speaker, Forbes Journalist, Market Researcher
Ivan, you are a gift to New Mexico: your style, elegance, unerring eye, kindness, tenacity, and love of what you do. We are proud to have been your colleagues and collaborators to support a healthy artistic community in New Mexico. We are your admirers and will always be deeply grateful for your support of our work and vision. Viva Ivan! Viva Patina!
Pamela and Don, Publishers of Collector’s Guide Santa Fe
Ivan, an artist himself, conveys sensitivity and respect for the gallery’s artists. When Ivan curates, he may juxtapose an idea that costs $100 with something that costs $10,000–but there is always a throughline between the two. He finds the throughline with people and with ideas, too.
Ivy Ross, USA President of & Head of Design for Products at Google
I am writing to express my warmest thanks—on behalf of The Nature Conservancy and the Santa Fe Farmers’ Market Institute for your support of our Picnic for Earth exhibition. The funds raised at the live auction will go a long way in supporting the missions of both organizations, which translates into work that has a positive impact for the communities of Northern New Mexico.
The Nature Conservancy