The access audit · Visual artists
The studio question is which work to make next. The access question is who would still find you if the gallery closed, the feed changed, or you moved cities.
Two questions · free · nothing you enter about your routes leaves your browser
Every route that brings attention to your work is one of three things, and two questions asked in order tell you which.
When someone shows up here, had they already chosen you?
If no, stop. The route is contested and question two does not apply. Coordinates you hold for people who never chose you are not a direct route.
Could you reach them again without this intermediary choosing you again?
Yes is direct. No is rented. Ordinary infrastructure you can replace does not count as a landlord.
Sorted by the two questions. Yours will differ — this is the shape of the reasoning, not a verdict on your career.
Unranked and unasked-for. The work has to win the place against every other entry.
The platform decides who sees the work, and the viewer was not looking for you.
The gallery confers standing you could not confer yourself, and holds the collector relationships.
Their judgement transferred to you for the run of the exhibition.
They chose you and you can start the next conversation.
Yours, portable, and it survives a change of gallery.
They discovered you cold. Real money, and no prior orientation toward you.
Standing conferred by an institution, on terms the institution sets.
This is often the right trade and it is why galleries exist. What the audit asks is a narrower question: if the relationship ended, which of those collectors could you contact yourself?
The audit places a route. It does not price one. For anything that came out rented — in this field that is usually your gallery — the next questions are:
Roughly 18% of art sales by value were happening online by mid-2024, per market reporting summarised by NYFA and others, which changes the size of the direct route without changing who controls the rented one.
It places your routes. It does not measure your career. It cannot see the quality of your work, your income, your craft, your credits or your reputation — and rented routes build all of those, even when they build no way back to anyone.
The underlying idea — that attention arrives contested, rented or direct — is free to use, adapt and teach. If this is wrong about your situation, that is worth more to me than if it is right: the contact is on the about page.