Art gallery owners in Baton Rouge are turning to public art and social media to expand the reach of their artists and to help fight the “retail apocalypse” hitting retail brick-and-mortar shops.
Ann Connelly and Chelsea Norris, co-directors of Ann Connelly Fine Art, say social media has been a boon for the industry. They’re constantly tagging each other on Instagram posts to show each other new art pieces or artists they’ve found, and both credit the tool for helping them court international artists to come to Baton Rouge. The artist they worked with to create an installation at the new Our Lady of the Lake Children’s Hospital is one they found from Instagram; she’s from Panama and has since been signed to Nike.
“We find a lot on Instagram,” Connelly says. “It’s a great disrupter.”
Kristen Downing, who opened KAWD Art Gallery on Government Street about a year ago, also says she uses social media. Instead of finding artists, she focuses on using it as a tool to promote events and drive more traffic to her gallery.
She also says her public art installations, primarily murals downtown, also help build excitement and increase business.
“It brings in people to meet you, and other creators who want to be trained by you,” Downing says. “We’re all free thinkers and we don’t limit our art to a wall to display.”
For Liz Walker, who’s owned Elizabethan Gallery for more than 30 years, she uses social media to share the gallery’s story and identity with the community. She says online shopping conglomerates like art.com and frames.com may offer people cheap art that seems convenient, but often what people receive is not the quality they expected.
“They may offer what seems like a sweet hard deal, and maybe for some posters and decorative pieces it’s fine, but it’s slowly, but surely affecting us,” Walker says. “It’s getting harder and harder to have your own shop because of online shopping.”
She’s also increasingly seeing young couples or single professionals who buy houses and wind up “house poor,” which also affects her sales.
“Housing is so expensive,” she says. “They can barely afford to furnish it, much less decorate it.”
