A still from Bravo’s “Gallery Girls” (courtesy Bravo TV)
If the debut of Bravo’s reality TV show Gallery Girls this fall wasn’t enough indication that art is maybe/really/finally going mainstream — at least on TV — then try this: E! is working on a scripted drama called Gallerina.
This is definitely something that television has been lacking: a scripted, hourlong show about a female gallery assistant. Deadline Hollywood broke the news today, and their description of the show is so good that we have no choice but to reproduce it in full:
Written by Michelle McGrath, Gallerina centers on a young woman determined to make her name at the Bettencourt Gallery, which symbolizes LA as the prestigious new center of the art world. Navigating the collision of moneyed elite, emerging artists and established players, not to mention the gallery’s womanizing namesake and her iconic mother, will put both her brains and morals to the test.
The executive producers for the show are Mike Tollin and Mark Waters, who directed Mean Girls — which, we have to say, makes our earlier comparison seem quite prescient.
With Gallerina on its way and, as Brian Boucher astutely points out at Art in America, Marnie Michaels employed as a gallery assistant on Lena Dunham’s Girls, one can only hope that this trope becomes a regular thing that spawns dozens of melodramatic, highly addictive TV shows. You read it here first, people: galleries are the new hospitals.
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