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Arts Organizations Consulting
Strategic Growth for Arts Organizations
Serious Play’s consulting for arts organizations provides a structured, customized approach to to help an arts-focused business, gallery, museum, or nonprofit achieve their objectives. Arts organizations face unique challenges. Some are navigating the intricacies of the art market to building sustainable practices that balance creativity with financial success. As your consultant at Serious Play, Ivan Barnett, I work closely with your organization’s leadership, offering expertise, strategic insights, and actionable solutions.
“Those who tell the stories rule the world.”
— Hopi American
Benefits of Serious Play’s Consulting
Working with a consultant provides arts 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.
A Path to Sustainable Success
For arts organizations and galleries looking to support their operations, consulting through Serious Play provides a valuable opportunity. You can step back, evaluate current practices, and implement strategies that align with your mission. With Ivan Barnett’s guidance, your organization can achieve its artistic and business goals. This will ensure a vibrant future filled with creativity, community, and financial stability.
Ultimately, consulting for arts organizations is a partnership designed to empower you to fulfill your vision, to grow sustainably, and to make a lasting impact in the art world. Through expert guidance, coaching, mentoring, and actionable strategies, Serious Play’s consulting offers a roadmap to success. This honors both the creative and operational sides of the art industry.
“Don’t follow the crowd, let the crowd follow you.”
Consulting Services at Serious Play
For 25 years, Ivan Barnett co-owned, directed, and curated Patina Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Barnett navigated the intense creative and financial demands of running a top-tier gallery. As the sole creative director, he often wished for a like-minded confidant to share insights and challenges. Now, the gallery world has evolved, with rising competition, economic pressures, and the need for innovation. Consequently, his goal as a creative coach and consultant through Serious Play is to provide support and strategic guidance for re-invention, fresh approaches, and meaningful growth. This will help you to captivate 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, Market, 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 & Communications
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.
Serious Play Consulting Case Studies
These Serious Play case studies show previous projects Ivan Barnett worked on with an artist as well as from organizational perspectives. They are a breakout of objectives and challenges undertaken to achieve solutions and results. These showed a significant change in the artist, gallery, and the organizations on completion of the collaboration. The conclusions are specific to the case study alone. They show Barnett’s working ability to collaborate, motivate, support, and transform an individual or an organization.
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, 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
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
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
Thank you for Ivan for your gift in support of the American Art department’s craft jewelry acquisitions. Your gift supports our efforts to acquire extraordinary works and cements our place in the uppermost echelon of encyclopedic institutions with such vibrant and growing collections.
Philadelphia Museum of Art
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