I Thought Galleries Needed Better Software. Turns Out I Was Wrong.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been talking with gallery owners, art advisors, artists, collectors, and collection managers while building ArteraQ.

A few things have stood out.

A lot of smaller galleries still rely on spreadsheets, folders, email, and sometimes just memory. Larger galleries usually have software, but there are still plenty of things happening outside of it.

The more people I talk to, the more I realize inventory itself isn’t really the hard part. It’s everything around it — documents, provenance, shipping, locations, insurance, communication, and keeping all of that information connected.

That’s also where I think AI could actually be useful — not as another flashy feature, but simply to reduce some of the manual work.

And maybe the biggest thing I’ve learned: better software alone isn’t enough to make people switch. It has to make their everyday work noticeably easier.

Still learning, and these conversations continue to change how I think about ArteraQ.

If you work with galleries, artists, or collections, I’d love to hear how you actually manage everything behind the scenes.