Empowering Community with Commonwealth and Council

What does community mean to you? For Commonwealth and Council, it means supporting their artists through good times and tough times, rooted in values that underscore the collective. It also means helping create and support markets of rising artists while maintaining the integrity of their diverse practices. 

Commonwealth and Council is working to change the status quo of running a commercial gallery in its own way, asking questions about what it means to navigate the art market and grow the business while addressing the vicissitudes and precarities of artist careers. They aim to care for artists’ needs long-term through the Council Fund and Commonwealth Trust, which was born through the gallery’s efforts to support artists throughout the pandemic. 

The Big Picture

The sense of community and care for its artists made this collaboration special to the ARTERNAL team. Commonwealth and Council’s team sought to better serve artists by improving their ability to sell artwork and engage with potential collectors. They also planned to bring on a director. How would ARTERNAL help them do this? 

By switching to a holistic client relationship management solution built for the art world, Commonwealth and Council would be able to improve internal communication. Additionally, they could leverage the mobile app to drive sales and personalize outreach, ultimately improving the collector experience across the board and increasing close success rates. 

The Facts

Overcoming Obstacles

The obstacles of running a successful art gallery that puts artists first comes with myriad goals and challenges, along with the standard fare. Commonwealth and Council experienced some work flow hurdles that made day-to-day operations cumbersome driving them to look for modern tools to help them grow. 

The gallery was struggling with an inventory system that required hours of manual updating. On top of that, they craved modern business tools like the ability to efficiently track sales offers and access inventory and contacts from a mobile app. The goal was to catapult them into a streamlined workflow and to get their operations up to speed and ensure they could provide the best support to their tight knit artist community and growing client list. 

Why ARTERNAL

Commonwealth and Council’s team knew that if they worked smarter, they could hold more exhibitions, add a new exhibition space, and hire a new sales director — all of which would directly impact their community’s success.

They wanted to use technology to rise above the antiquated status quo in the artworld and provide their team with smart, intuitive, and sophisticated tools, which ARTERNAL’s solution would help them accomplish. ARTERNAL was a no brainer for a gallery that is constantly growing and looking to the future, such as Commonwealth and Council. 

The gallery’s goals weren’t merely aspirational, as was proven by the results of using the ARTERNAL platform.