Art gallery 2.0

Art galleries will always have their place in the city, but to survive, they'll have to become more than just venues to sell art pieces - they need to become venues to sell art experiences. Check out these two trends:

1. The rise of the design economy. Think how Target has the world's top designers designing their everyday products at affordable prices.

2. The rise of the experience economy. Think of a progressive bookstore with an in-house organic cafe amidst a poetry slam. Or Anthropologie, which sells a lifestyle rather than a line of products, or the Galleria illy profiled yesterday.

The result? The art gallery becomes the art cafe, art bar, or art lounge/restaurant/theater, or basically anything but only an art gallery if it is to thrive in the modern economy and its merging of retail and entertainment.

Then, taking a page from the design economy, everything from the traditional art pieces to the chairs people are sitting on to the coasters under their drinks and the glasses themselves, are part of the 'art gallery collection' and for sale by the artists who designed them. To have patrons experience one's art with at least three of the five senses than via just one is perhaps more meaningful to many artists, as well as the patrons.

Image: Art cafe in Dubai by mayadelic.