
Gallery Girl Angela mops up in heels. (all images courtesy Bravo TV)
The two-minute preview for the new Bravo TV show Gallery Girls is titled “The Cutthroat World of Gallery Girls.” The clip promises the approved dose of unapologetic reality TV narcissism, e.g. “[People] think I’m a brat or whatever. That’s fine with me” and “That makes me seem completely narcissistic … which I am, but … ” But what stands out most about the ad is the repeated emphasis on competition. In the world of this show, “everyone’s just fighting to survive” in New York. Not in the gritty, existential sense of a Bruce Springsteen song, or in the way that millions of New Yorkers are working class and struggling, but because privileged and ambitious people are mean. Success in this world is, of course, measured in dollars; in the clip, one gallery girl talks about why she loves curating her own gallery: “It makes me want to sell million-dollar paintings.”
None of this is surprising coming from the TV station that ranked artists in a reality competition, as if a panel of judges beholden to TV producers is an acceptable way to judge art’s quality, as if one can objectively rank artists by quality. Bravo refuses to acknowledge the one thing that makes a work of art interesting in this money-fueled world: it has a whole set of competing criteria and subjectivities that have nothing to do with its price tag.
One girl mentions that she was “obsessed with Carrie Bradshaw’s life” in Sex and the City. Like that show, Gallery Girls will appeal to those both inside and outside New York: New Yorkers, who have a hearty streak of narcissism ourselves, love to see our own lives reflected back through TV’s bizarre glass; for those elsewhere, the show will stand in that great tradition of showing a skewed city where most people are white, good-looking, judgmental and either wealthy or striving to be. There is danger in reinforcing these patterns. The show also seems to take it as a given that women populate the peripheries of galleries, but I’m not sure we should hold our breathe and wait to see if they bother to ask why. In the gendered art world, where the myth of male artistic genius still dominates and women are too often dismissed as, well, the types of women in this commercial, perhaps this is not the image to project week after week to a national audience.

“The art world is super cutthroat” (courtesy Bravo TV)
Watching this preview of Gallery Girls, you would think nearly everyone in the arts wears stilettos and makeup (or is a horribly obnoxious man), is trying to eviscerate the competition or is unapologetically devoted to the dollar. In fact, there live artists and art workers today who commit themselves to things like “ideas” and “innovation.” Some are even attached to such unpopular words as “community,” “sincerity’,” “politics” and “technique.”
For anyone who doesn’t identify with the Gallery Girls‘ conception of the art world, this will be the show you love to hate. But this isn’t really a show about art anyway; Gallery Girls is as much about art as Survivor is about tropical ecology. This is a show about the swirl of capital and ego that surrounds and occasionally attaches itself to art. “Art” just serves as the excuse — the mover of dollars, a tool of self-glorification and an occasion for parties.
‘In New York everyone wants to work in the art world.’
Where is she from?
Leave it to Bravo!!
if you need a recapper, you know who to call… by which i mean gchat
Lame. Pass on these moronic dips.
i always thought a reality show about the lives of art handlers would be a good idea. but no..rich people are farrrr more interesting i guess.
I love this idea!
oh good god. Anyone who says such stupid stuff about UES vs Brooklyn is showing their fly-over state roots. and they should return to said flyover state, as they will never be New Yorkers.
Oh boy- this summer’s guilty indulgence…. “Art” just serves as the excuse — the mover of dollars, a tool of self-glorification and an occasion for parties.” -amen
well written review.
I have two words for y’all: Mary. Blakemore.
THE REAL Gallery Girls: http://maryblakemore.com/index.php?/project/2011/
I am a forever fan!
Check out #136
NO surprise that Eli Klein is in a show this sleazy. Guess the girl didn’t get down on her knees and beg that guy for a job. That guy is like Donald Trump, but slightly worse.
He could at least get a Mac.
his line to that rejected applicant, “i’m happy for you that you got to meet me.” says all you need to know about him.
OMG, it’s like Chelsea Housewives without Husbands. <3<3<3
Girls? They look like women to me.
As much as I was like “this is ridiculous” while reading this article, who am I kidding? I’m already hooked.
I am a gallery girl, and I can already tell that this show paints an inaccurate picture of who most of us really are. I’m here, in the gallery, every day of the week simply because I love art, not because I want someone to notice me, not because I’m waiting for something better, not because my parents want me to occupy my time in some sort of meaningful way. Maybe the title is misleading, because “gallery” connotes art to me, and clearly there is no connection to art at all other than a backdrop for this insipid drama.
“Reality” shows present a warped version of reality. Television does not exist to entertain or enlighten us, it exists to indoctrinate, and to play on our anxieties in order to sell us things we don’t need. Don’t waste your life watching an endless stream of cultural garbage.
the show is a joke I am a Real Artist who sell art work gallery baby is a big joke
I much preferred the commercial that ran before the clip.