“We Have to Question Everything We’re Doing” – Veteran Art Dealer Richard Solomon on Bringing Galleries Into the 21st Century

By Stephanie Strasnick

Photo by Carlin Mayer. Courtesy Pace Prints, New York.

“Some collectors want to put art on their walls, live with it, love it, and learn from it,” says Richard Solomon, President of Pace Prints. “Some collectors want to hang it, others want to put it in storage or send it to Delaware. There’s no bad reason for collecting art.” In his five decades at the helm of the famed publishing house and gallery, Solomon has encountered a diverse array of collectors and artists, and has gained invaluable insight into contemporary collecting practices and the ever-changing art market.

Though he attests he is “not much of a salesperson,” the industry veteran has achieved unmatched success in the prints and multiples business and has partnered with more than 150 artists from the 1960s to the present to produce their editions. Since opening their doors 50 years ago, the gallery has mounted hundreds of exhibitions and participated in numerous fairs, including The Art Show and Art Basel.

At the request of his friend, Pace Gallery’s founder Arne Glimcher, Solomon established Pace Editions Inc. in collaboration with Glimcher in 1968. Over the past 50 years, Pace Editions, now renamed Pace Prints, has published over 150 different artists including Chuck Close, Jean Dubuffet, Shepard Fairey, Helen Frankenthaler, Jenny Holzer, Sol LeWitt, Robert Mangold, Yoshitomo Nara, Louise Nevelson, Robert Ryman, and Pat Steir among others. In addition to print galleries on 57th Street and in Chelsea, Pace Prints has a printmaking facility in Manhattan and a papermaking print workshop in Brooklyn.

Helen Frankenthaler, Geisha, 2003, twenty-three color Ukiyo-e woodcut, printed from 15 woodblocks on Torinoko paper and mounted onto Fabriano, Classico paper. Edition of 50. Courtesy Pace Prints, New York.

We sat down with the Boston-born and New York-raised gallerist to discuss the challenges facing 21st-century dealers, the enduring appeal of prints and works on paper, and the curious path that led him from supermarket executive to New York City marketing executive to the reigning King of Prints.

When did you first become interested in visual art?

My mother was a very avid collector. When I was in my early teens, she started bringing me around to galleries and would give me sculptors’ drawings for presents.

Did you continue to learn about and collect art in your late teens and twenties?

At Harvard, I originally thought I’d be a History of Art major but I eventually became a Government major. After graduating college, I went directly to the Harvard Business School and then into the family’s supermarket business. One day my wife and I were walking down Newbury Street in Boston. We looked in the window of a gallery with the name Pace on it. We ended up buying the first thing that Arne Glimcher sold as a dealer.

What inspired you to go into the print business with him?

Arne and I became good friends. Five years after we met, I returned to New York to work as a marketing executive at Clairol. In 1968, Pace Editions, now known as Pace Prints, was started as a separate entity from the Gallery by Arne Glimcher, with me as a silent partner, to publish a work by Lucas Samaras. By 1970, Arne had decided that he wanted to go into print publishing in a serious manner and to establish a print gallery as well. He persuaded me to leave Clairol and develop his vision as the full-time president of Pace Editions Inc.

Arne’s concept was that the Pace Gallery needed the capacity to be responsive to every medium in which their artists wanted to create art. He basically said that to fully represent an artist, Pace should have the facilities to enable the artist do whatever they want. In those days—the 1960s—publishers like Multiples, ULAE and Gemini were working with artists with a variety of gallery allegiances. Arne thought that if Pace Gallery artists wanted to create editions, Pace should have an in-house capacity to facilitate it. He decided that the time was right to make a serious commitment by setting up a separate company as publishers of limited edition prints and multiples and a gallery devoted to prints. He recruited me to make it happen.

Yoshitomo Nara, Untitled, 2010, a series of ten Ukiyo-e woodcuts. Edition of 50. Courtesy Pace Prints, New York.

Was the transition from advertising to art dealing a difficult one?

I was apprehensive to make the move. I told Arne, “What do I know about this business?” He said, “You’ll learn.” And here we are, 50 years later, and I’m still learning.

One of the things I understood about myself at the time was that I was a people person with a relatively decent marketing mentality—but not a great salesperson.

If you didn’t feel your sales abilities were strong, how did you adapt?

I have pretty good eyes, a pretty good sense of quality, and I’ve been able to hire excellent people over the past 50 years—most of whom are still with us if they haven’t retired. Our ability to attract a really good staff has let us thrive. I think that’s been the secret. We have really talented printers and gallery personnel. The Pace Gallery in the early days, supplied all the artists, like Louise Nevelson, Chuck Close, Jean Dubuffet, and Agnes Martin. More recently, Jacob Lewis, in his thirties, has been identifying the talent. Our wonderfully creative printers have enabled us to realize diverse projects with artists in a variety of printmaking processes.

Louise Nevelson, Nightscape, 1975, black cast paper relief. Edition of 75. Courtesy Pace Prints, New York.

How did Pace Prints become the renowned print gallery that it is today?

In 1975, three important things happened: Chuck Close, Agnes Martin, and Jim Dine came to the Pace Gallery.

Why was that important? Jim Dine, in my opinion, is one of the great contemporary printmakers. He loves making prints, and it is part of his DNA. He was a major reason why we actually established an in-house printmaking workshop under the direction of Joe Wilfer, who came to us as a talented printer. Joe’s inventiveness was immediately recognized by Chuck Close—who became a major printmaker for us in collaboration with Joe.

As a result, by the end of the 1970s, we were making prints in our own facilities instead of outsourcing them as we did with a number of artists, including Alfred Jensen, Louise Nevelson, and Jean Dubuffet, during our initial years as publishers.

Jean Dubuffet, Faits Mémorables III, 1978, silkscreen. Edition of 70. Courtesy Pace Prints, New York.

Has it been a challenge keeping the business stable in recent years?

Today is a particularly difficult time to be in the art world, both for art dealers and print publishers. It’s a very different world than it was in the 20th century, and I think we’re all struggling to figure out how to best adapt our businesses to be as successful in the 21st century as we were in the 20th.

Our publishing activities reflect, by necessity, a more diverse group of artists compared to our initial dependence on artists represented by the Pace Gallery. Reaching out to a wider community of artists has had its pluses and minuses. It has been increasingly difficult to get artists committed to showing up at our workshops as artists today are constantly pressured by their galleries to produce unique works for exhibitions, or for the next art fair, or for one of their international affiliated galleries. To say that the artists we want to publish are over-committed is an understatement.

It has also been extremely difficult for print dealers and publishers to get access to art fairs, or preferential placements in them, and it is extremely costly to participate in exchange for a few days of exposure—but art fairs have become increasingly important channels of distribution. All of this has added dramatically to the challenges of operating successful businesses.

Pat Steir, Dragon Waterfall, 2001, four-color screenprint. Edition of 35. Courtesy Pace Prints, New York.

What have you been doing in response to all of these struggles?

We’ve been taking on younger artists, as well as those with greater international visibility. We’ve also been expanding the aesthetic range in our publishing. We are lessening our edition sizes, producing a greater percentage of mono-prints, developing creative approaches to printmaking, and trying to find new methods of distribution and promotion.

The bottom line, however, is that we—like all of my colleagues—have not really solved many of the new challenges that we continue to face.

What is one of the most significant changes you’ve seen in this business in the past decade?

The big change is art itself. Somewhere along the line, contemporary art has increasingly become a fiduciary instrument. Branding has become extremely important. When I was in the supermarket business, we all recognized the importance of brand identification. It is happening big time in today’s contemporary art world.

In the past, artists’ brands—reputations—were created by museum acquisitions and exhibitions. Today, their reputations are more frequently created by market manipulation and social media promotion. They are easier to establish and promote, and often created by forces outside of the art world. A recognizable artist’s brand has monetary, trade, and auction value, and collectors are very conscious of that.

Leonardo Drew, 37P, 2015, pigmented, printed and cast handmade paper. Edition of 1, unique. Courtesy Pace Prints, New York.

What changes are you making in your approach to publishing?

More and more, we’re moving away from asking our artists to consider making print editions and instead we are encouraging them to make mono-prints. In the current collecting climate, uniqueness is frequently more appealing to collectors than owning a work that has been produced in editions. There is often a considerable aesthetic benefit in that the artist’s hand is more apparent in a mono-print. Additionally, in many cases, it is more cost effective as it does not involve producing a number of editions higher than what ends up being sold.

We have recognized that as printers and publishers we need to become increasingly creative in developing new processes such as in our papermaking workshop and our use of technology and new materials. Our skills in this regard have resulted in projects that we might not have dreamed possible when we started our own workshops in the mid-1970s.

James Turrell, Suite from Aten Reign, 2014, aquatint etching. Edition of 30. Courtesy Pace Prints, New York.

Can you pinpoint one of the single biggest issues facing dealers in 2018, and how dealers might confront it?

Besides confronting the facts of the increasing costs of doing business, I think one of the biggest single problems we’re facing today is there is not a spirit of collaboration among dealers. I’m not saying it’s easy. I mean, how do we foster a collaborative environment in such a competitive one?

Possibly some form of consolidation—both national and international—will need to take place. It is happening in almost every industry. Globalization and the costs and pressures of doing business have resulted in the necessity for major structural changes within many industries. Maybe, it needs to happen in the art business in some form.

Shara Hughes, Tree on the Hill, 2018, monotype with oil-based ink. Courtesy Pace Prints, New York.

You seem very open to change and very proactive when it comes to altering your business model as needed. What would you say to veteran dealers who are reluctant to change?

Everybody needs to examine their objectives, think more about collaboration and how they can have a greater impact in their segment of the art world. How can we, as gallerists, get the collectors back into the galleries? We are all paying a very high price for our galleries. It is our number one challenge to increase the returns on our real estate investments.

As gallerists, we need to figure out how to effectively and efficiently attract artists and clients and increase our productivity in all areas of our business. Among the many challenges, figuring out how to compete with the auction houses and art fairs will require learning how to effectively use the Internet as a selling vehicle as well as for publicity and informational purposes.

As with everything else in the 21st century, we all need to reevaluate everything. Success in the past does not relate to success in the future. Much of what we thought we were doing right in the 20th century probably isn’t as applicable in the 21st. We do not have to reinvent ourselves, but we do have to continuously question what we’re doing.