“Remember That What We Do is Bigger Than Ourselves" - Jessica Silverman on Building Relationships, Collaboration, and Strategically Navigating the Art World

by Kim Cabrera • April, 2022

Jessica Silverman, photo by Stan Olszewski / SOSKI Photo. 

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Jessica Silverman has always found a variety of ways to utilize her curatorial eye, beginning with mounting shows in a small local vitrine and a basement project space while still in school. In 2008, after graduating from California College of the Arts with an MA in Curatorial Studies, Jessica opened her first official gallery on San Francisco’s Sutter Street. Since then, she has built a roster of local and international artists, created strong relationships with curators and collectors in San Francisco and beyond, and most recently, moved into a new, expanded space in San Francisco’s Chinatown.

We sat down with Jessica to discuss, among other things, her entry into the art world, the San Francisco art scene, and the various changes her gallery and the art world at large has faced over the years.

Installation view, Woody De Othello: Looking In, 2021, photo by Phillip Maisel.

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When was the first moment you became interested in the visual arts; was there one singular “aha” moment or did that interest evolve over time?

I think it’s fairly public knowledge, but I grew up around my grandparents who collected art — Fluxus in particular — and I remember distinct moments when I knew I loved art and was interested in who the artist was and why the collector collected.

One of those moments was when I met Yoko Ono. I remember thinking, “She’s so cool. Artists are cool.” And also really unique and individual. When I grew up in Michigan, I went to this college preparatory school and I was kind of an outsider since I was one of the few people interested in the art department, so meeting an artist who was so much herself was appealing to me, and I thought “this is a world I want to be part of.”

You had originally started out as an artist yourself?

Yes, very early on. I spent a lot of time in the darkroom at my high school and then I went to Otis College. About a year into Otis College, it was very, very clear that I wasn’t going to be an artist. It was important for me to go through that, and then have my teacher say, “I think you’re really more of a curator, your interests align more with curatorial work.” From there, I started investigating that as a path forward for myself, and wound up at California College of the Arts for curatorial practice.

In relation to your grandparents’ collection — did you go with them to visit artists, or to studios or to galleries, or did you just experience the art through the physical collection?

I went to Washington, D.C. and New York with them a few times and we visited museums and galleries. We used to go to Max Protetch’s gallery, because my grandfather and he were good friends. I also saw the works at the Detroit Institute of Arts, at their house, and within their private collection stored in downtown Detroit.

Would you say that the experience seeing art with your grandparents helped shape some of your ideas about how to view art, or the critical lens through which to view it?

I learned the importance of “need to have and can’t live without.” The empathy that I try to bring to my relationships with collectors was also informed by my relationship with my grandparents.

Initially, in dealing with my grandparents, I didn’t think a lot about the curatorial until much later when I was already on that path. They had always been very engaged with everything that Jon Hendricks did for them. Jon was guiding how they built their collection, and creating the systems to organize it. His use of systems and categories engaged me further in the curatorial.

Could you tell us a little more about that project space you opened in a basement in your early days, how that came to be?

Even before I had my space, I had a little vitrine that was outside a building —the kind you put notices in. I rented one in San Francisco and put on little shows until I had a break-in. Then I was done doing that.

After, I opened my basement space, which was not a formal gallery, but a project space I ran in 2006 during grad school. In 2007 I graduated, and in 2008 I moved to Sutter Street, where I started to formalize the gallery and think about what it meant to represent an artist.

Who were some of the gallery’s first artists, and how did you go about making the decision to start working with them in a formal way?

I grew up in Michigan with my friend Job Piston, who is a photographer. He was graduating from CCA in San Francisco, and he did a show with me. I asked him to organize an exhibition of artists that he was interested in, or learned from, so we had Larry Sultan and Tammy Rae Carland. Tammy Rae joined the roster and her show was the first we did in our Sutter Street space. She’s now the provost at CCA, but still an important part of our program.

When you were starting out and you were younger, did you find that you had to convince people to buy from you, or convince artists to sign on?

Totally. I did feel like I had to convince people. I didn’t really mind until it became frustrating. I didn’t want to go through my grandparents, and didn’t want what I did to be determined by who they knew, so I was pretty stubborn about going about it my own way.

I had tons of relationships that didn’t work, where I’d put an artist in a group show and they would decide that they wanted to wait for someone bigger — and, not to toot my own horn, but oftentimes those artists never found anyone bigger. For me this is very much a relationship world. When people aren’t willing to invest in the relationship in the same way as I am, it invariably doesn’t work. Maybe I was initially upset or irritated, but long term I’ve never felt resentful about a relationship that didn’t work out.

Installation view, Hayal Pozanti: Lingering, 2021, photo by Phillip Maisel.

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When you first started the gallery, did you have a clear vision of what you wanted the program to be, or were you a little more organic about that process, and let the artists you were interested in drive that?

I definitely thought I had a clear vision, but in retrospect, I don’t think I did — I was young and figuring it out. I would say that something that’s always been important to me is the relationship between the conceptual rigor of a practice and the visual results. I’m very interested in the way something is made, and the nature of how the artist got there.

Did you find that when you were talking with artists, because you originally came from that creative background, even if you didn’t necessarily spend a lot of time doing that, that they opened up to you in a way that maybe they wouldn’t necessarily have?

Yeah, maybe. I think I’ve always had a lot of empathy for artists, because I had a studio practice for some time and try to remember how daunting it can be to be vulnerable, transparent, and raw with visitors.

You talked about a sense of empathy for collectors, and being empathetic towards who the collector is and what their needs are. Are there certain things you always like to make sure of, certain ways the collector is taken care of beyond the traditional transaction itself?

Yes. I’m constantly reminding my colleagues about the relationship. Many of our collectors date back like 10 years of working with me, and it’s one of the things that people who are new to the gallery realize.

We try to be a gallery that really fosters long-term relationships with our artists, our collectors, and the curators we collaborate with. I see no reason for a collector relationship to go sour because of miscommunication, so we try hard to be as communicative, transparent, and helpful with collectors as possible to achieve what they need.

Someone asked me the other day, “What do you love to do most?” I said, “I love selling art.” Not in a transactional way, but in the sense that I sold an artwork to someone that they’re excited about, and when they get to meet the artist, they get to be so happy that they bought this artist’s work and they’re supporting it. I just love watching that play out.

Exterior of Jessica Silverman, San Francisco, photo by Henrik Kam.

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You recently moved to your new space in Chinatown. When is the moment you knew that shift needed to occur? Again, was there one moment or did you kind of come to the realization over time?

I found the new space in November of 2019 and in January 2020 I signed the lease. We had been outgrowing the gallery space for some time. Since 2019, I knew I wanted to move, especially in terms of where the staff was sitting and the overflow in the storage room.

A lot of your artists haven’t had a chance to have their show in the new space, but as you start to learn the bones of the space, the way the light is different at different times of day, do you share that with them? Or do you let them discover that on their own?

Ideally anyone who’s having a show comes and sees the space before. For Hayal Pozanti’s show in January 2022, that [didn’t] happen, but fortunately for us she’s a painter so it [felt] fairly easy to strategize.

We’re talking to Martha Friedman about her [forthcoming] show. I told her she might want to visit because she would like to show these new lightboxes she’s making, so we’re trying to figure out — how much light will bleed into the space? Is there anything we need to do in advance to ensure that the works will look like how she envisions it?

Martha Friedman, Nerve Language 8, 2020, photo by Kristine Eudey.

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What role did the neighborhood itself play in the move?

I was very interested in being part of a neighborhood that had a strong sense of self. And I love the connections I’ve made here — everything from the foot police who walk around and constantly make sure people are safe, to the chocolate place next door who we send visitors to and vice versa.

Looking at the art community as a whole within San Francisco and viewing that in contrast to, for instance, New York or LA, what would you say are some of the best assets that the San Francisco gallery scene has that those other two large cities don’t?

I think it’s a good question. I sometimes feel like I’m a little bit on an island here. My biggest anxiety is that San Francisco is read as a local and provincial art scene, but I don’t feel like it is or at least, that’s not my relationship to it.

One of the nice things about San Francisco is how close and friendly the gallery scene is. For instance, after I speak to you I have to call Claudia Altman-Siegel, who wants to ask something. Jeffery Fraenkel is one my closest friends, and Tony Meier and I share an accountant who he graciously introduced me to. I took John Berggruen to lunch the other day. That’s kind of the scene.

And the museums — Claudia Schmuckli is a really close friend, Jenny Gheith and I share the same birthday and get together frequently. I’m very close to Ali Gass, who’s starting the ICA SF, and Susan Sayre Batton, at the San José Museum. I consider some of them as my best friends.

And did these relationships factor in to the project that you all created, the 8-bridges platform?

A lot of that came out of conversations a smaller group of us had. We thought — ok, we’re pretty good at getting out-of-towners into the gallery when they visit, but what if no one comes into town? How do we transact, what does that look like? Is there anything we can do to spread the word about what is happening in San Francisco? And that’s where that came from.

As the world re-opens, we’ve been caught in the middle of transition. We’ve all gotten pretty busy and we’re trying to figure out what 8-bridges looks like when things progress.

Speaking of reopening, and the idea that you’re going to art fairs and other places and the international aspect is starting to open up again, did you find, when you first opened the gallery, that there was a receptive audience in the Bay Area to your international artists, or was there a lot of teaching and education your clients in terms of them starting to build collections?

That’s a good question. There are collectors that I almost feel like I advise — we talk a lot about what they’re looking at and where they want to put their energy. I’ve actually hopped in the car and driven around to look at art with those collectors — it’s more educational.

But there is a pretty prolific collection of advisors here and I would say that the advisors do a really good job of ensuring that collectors are knowledgeable and expansive.

Sadie Barnette, Family Tree, 2021, photo by John Wilson White.

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In the 15 years since you began — for now, let’s leave the last 18 months out of it — the art world has changed massively. How have you had to adapt the gallery to those changes, be they the speed at which the art world works, or the new digital landscape?

It’s so funny because I think a lot has changed, but I also think in some ways, very little has changed. We still schlep things around the world and show them to people. I guess now there’s a little more done on the phone, and so there’s a little less schlepping in advance of the commitments, and obviously digital platforms have allowed for online sales to become achievable.

There’s still not as much collaboration amongst dealers as I would like to see. I think that institutions still have a hard time getting budgets to buy art. But on the positive side, I think that because of the internet the world has gotten a little bit smaller and therefore artists — like for instance, those we represent — get to be well-known more quickly, from a curatorial point of view.

Do you find that there’s lots of talk now about who the new, young collectors are going to be? Certainly that comes up around tech and art and NFTs and the like. Have you found that there’s a consistent kind of series of traits with a younger generation of collectors you’re engaging with, or is it that everybody’s very different and unique in their own right?

I think everyone’s pretty different and unique in their own right. One of the things I’d say is that a lot of the collectors that we deal with are fairly eccentric and don’t just collect one thing. I just had a call this morning with a collector who asked me if I’d ever come across an artist called A.Y. Jackson. He’s a Canadian painter who died in the ‘70s. [The collector] is Canadian, and really connected to the landscapes he painted.

People are very individual here, especially if they don’t work with an advisor. I find that the collectors are not really following “what’s hot,” which is refreshing.

Often in NYC, back in the day, collectors would inherit the board seat at the Met or the MoMA from their parents and so it stayed in a very siloed lane, but would you say that in fact, collectors are a broader, more diverse range of people than what we experienced in the art world in the earlier days of your career?

In some ways. I tend to be drawn to collectors who march to their own beat, kind of like I do. Over time, for me, I’ve been able to weed people out quickly. In the older days, I just sold things to those who wanted to buy. Now, I place things.

And speaking of young collectors just getting started, what would you give as advice for someone who’s never bought before or is just dipping their toe?

My advice is to look at as much as possible. Finding a way to trust your instincts, which is kind of how I operate, is the best path forward.

Installation view, Woody De Othello: Looking In, 2021, photo by Phillip Maisel.

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You’ve talked previously about discussing with an artist when you might raise prices as their career moves forward, and one of the things you encourage is a sense of patience about that process. Can you talk more about how you go about making that decision with the artist?

I have this anxiety that once you go up, it’s hard to come down. We try to raise prices in a very restrained and thoughtful manner. A good instance of raising prices is an artist having a museum show, that would give us the credibility, I suppose, to raise prices 10–20% from where they’re at.

But we try not to be overly excitable. Woody De Othello— he’s 30 and still a young guy, but the demand for his work is tremendously strong. We could be selling things for far more than we do, but that doesn’t really benefit him in the long term. We’re interested in helping shape a long, stable career, and not what’s right in front of us. We try to be intelligent about the ways we build artist pricing structures.

Would you say there’s a foundational strategy when you start working with a young artist, that there’s certain things you, or they, need to do to help build the seriousness of their place within the art market?

Well, I think it takes both parties. Sadie Barnette is a great example. She works super hard and is really strategic, smart, and connected. She nurtures those connections, she thinks deliberately about the placement of her work, like we do, and we’re able to continuously bring in important voices to support the practice together.

We try to balance our time between strategically placing things with private clients who are on museum boards in order to sell things to museums down the road. We found that museums often don’t have budgets to buy what they want themselves, so building the collector relationship for the artist is important to ensure that the museums can find buyers for the works they want to bring into the collection. We do a lot of matchmaking.

Sadie Barnette, Home Good: Couch II, 2019, photo by John Wilson White.

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As you’re talking about the pricing of artists’ works — are there times where you have to play a restraining role, be the patient one, because you see this long game ahead of you that maybe an artist who’s starting out isn’t really aware of?

I have to say, artists are pretty trusting so we don’t get a ton of pushback on things. When we’re like “Hey, let’s wait and see what happens,” or “We’re not going to offer this now, we’re going to save it for X,” our artists support us, thankfully. Otherwise, it would be challenging. But it doesn’t mean it’s not hard on our part.

We have another question for you that’s kind of unique to your position here at the ADAA. You’ve been an amazing part of the ADAA Membership Committee and I’m wondering, for you, what was meaningful about becoming an ADAA member?

Well, I talked about how collaboration is something that’s really important to me. The ADAA really nurtures that, encourages it, and kind of insists on it; that is a really appealing component of what the ADAA brings to a gallery who has the option to be involved.

The Art Show is one of many collectors’ favorite fairs to go to because it’s more like an exhibition; it’s so deeply curated and considered, and the experience of that week is a really cohesive one. People come back day after day to experience it, repeatedly.

The Art Show 2021, photo by Scott Rudd Productions.

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When we originally asked you about how things have shifted in the last 15 years, we said let’s leave out the last 18 months. But now, let’s return to that period. Obviously, we are still processing the pandemic, but are there a couple things that you’ve learned in the last 18 months that have either surprised you about the market, or your business in particular?

The market’s been kind of insane. It’s been a bananas year in terms of business. There are supply chain issues across all parties — galleries, artists, construction workers — involved.

Our collectors, early on in COVID, stepped up and bought art from us even when they had no idea, like all of us, what was going to happen.

I would also say, with the onset of NFTs and cryptocurrency, we’re seeing an influx of younger voices — they’re not all buying great contemporary art yet, but they are coming to the market.

There was a lot of talk amongst our members, as well as the press, asking, “Is this the end of the physical gallery space? Who needs a physical gallery space if this whole digital online presence works out?” Would you say the last 18 months have proven that we still need the physical interaction with the work?

I do. Sarah [Thornton], my partner, has written a lot about this. In the past, there was this thought that tech people would like digital works, but actually that’s not really true, because they are at computers all day.

It seems like tech people like mediums like sculpture because of the reassurance and enjoyment of being a body in space and looking at something physical in relationship to themselves.

Is there anything else you wanted to make a point of mentioning or any other advice for young dealers or collectors you think we should impart?

I would say, remember that what we do is bigger than ourselves. Do things for the right reasons and choose collaboration rather than thinking you can do it yourself. That has always been the best advice I’ve given myself in order to pursue success.

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Photograph of Jessica Silverman courtesy Jessica Silverman, San Francisco. All gallery and artwork images courtesy the artists and Jessica Silverman, San Francisco.