Before You Sign: Contracts and Consignment from the Gallery Side

By Cassie Stone, Founder of REvisART · August 27, 2026 · Updated October 15, 2026

By Cassie Stone

Getting a contract from a legitimate company can feel like you already made it through the hard part. That is exactly the moment to slow down. I run a gallery, artists bring contracts to my desk, and I can tell you where the trouble always lives: not in the headline terms, but in the quiet clauses that are easiest to skim.

This article is in two halves. First, the five clauses to find in any contract, a licensing deal, a commission, a collaboration, a publication. Then consignment, the agreement that governs your work the moment it hangs on a gallery's wall, written from my side of the desk.

The five quiet clauses

For each one: what the clause says, in the language you will actually see, and what it means in plain words.

1. The rights grant.

*Says:* "Artist grants an exclusive license to all rights in the Work."

*Means:* only they can use it, and while the grant runs you cannot license it elsewhere, sometimes not even use it yourself. Exclusive is not a detail. It is the deal. Exclusivity always costs more, so if the grant says exclusive, the fee should say so too.

2. The forever words.

*Says:* "in perpetuity, in all media now known or hereafter developed."

*Means:* forever, everywhere, including formats that do not exist yet. There are deals where that is fair. There are very few where it is fair at the price of a one year license. Price it like forever, or negotiate it down to a term with a renewal.

3. Work made for hire.

*Says:* "The Work shall be considered a work made for hire."

*Means:* the copyright was never yours to begin with. Not transferred. Never yours. Sometimes that is genuinely the arrangement, commercial illustration often works this way, but it is a much bigger sale than the fee usually admits. If you see these words, decide whether you are selling the property, not just the project. This is the same phrase to watch for in commission agreements, which I covered in the first article of this series.

4. The payment trigger.

*Says:* "Payment due net 60 upon acceptance."

*Means:* not when you deliver. When they accept, whenever that is, plus sixty days. Find three things: the amount, the event that starts the clock, and the length of the clock. If "acceptance" is undefined, ask what it means and get the answer in the agreement.

5. Termination and reversion.

*Says:* "This agreement survives termination."

*Means:* some rights do not come home when the deal ends. Find the line that says when your rights return to you. If it is not there, ask for it. How a deal ends is as important as how it starts, because careers are long and companies are not.

The signing rules

Four habits that prevent almost all contract regret:

• Never sign the day you receive it. No legitimate opportunity dies overnight. Urgency is a pressure tactic or an accident, and either way it is not your problem.

• Read it twice. Once for what you are getting. Once, separately, for what you are giving. They hide in different sentences.

• Ask questions. Real companies expect them. A counterparty who bristles at questions is telling you something important, for free, before you sign.

• On a big one, buy the hour. A lawyer's hour reviewing a significant contract is the cheapest insurance you will ever purchase. The expensive version is the same conversation after signing.

Consignment: the gallery has your art. Who owns it?

Now the second half, from my side of the desk.

When you leave work with a gallery on consignment, you are not giving the gallery ownership. Consignment means the gallery holds it, shows it, and sells it on your behalf. You own every piece on that wall until a buyer pays. Title passes from you to the buyer at the sale. It never belongs to the gallery at all.

That is the law of it. The protection of it is paper. Every consigned piece in my gallery is on paper before it hangs, and a professional gallery should be comfortable with everything below. Artists should want it just as much.

The consignment agreement, line by line

• The inventory list. Every work, listed with photos, titles, and retail prices, signed by both sides. This one page is the whole ballgame, and you will see why at the end.

• The commission split. The percentage, in writing. Splits vary by market, commonly in the range of forty to sixty percent to the gallery. Surprises should not.

• Pricing authority. Who sets the retail price, and what discount the gallery may give without calling you first. A ten percent courtesy discount to a serious buyer is normal. It should still be defined.

• The payout. How many days after a sale you are paid. A number, not a vibe. Thirty days is common.

• Insurance. Who covers damage or loss while the work is in the gallery's care. It should be the gallery, wall to wall, from the moment the work arrives until it leaves.

• Duration and the exit. How long the consignment runs, how either side ends it, and how the work comes home: who packs, who ships, who pays.

The worst day clause

Here is the part nobody wants to discuss and everyone should: what happens if the gallery closes.

Galleries are businesses, and businesses sometimes fail. When one does, creditors come for its assets. Your consigned work is not the gallery's asset, and many US states have artist consignment laws that specifically shield consigned artwork from a gallery's creditors. But every one of those protections works through the same document: the signed inventory list proving which pieces are yours. No list, and you are a stranger arguing with a bankruptcy process.

So the rule from my side of the desk is absolute: no list, no consignment. A gallery that resists putting the relationship on paper is not protecting a relationship. It is avoiding one.

Questions to ask a gallery before the work leaves your studio

Copy this list into your notes:

• Can we do a signed inventory list with photos and prices?

• What is the split, and when am I paid after a sale?

• Who sets prices, and what discounts do you give without asking me?

• Are the works insured while they are here, and for how much?

• How long is the consignment, and how does the work come back to me?

• What happens to my work if the gallery closes?

A good gallery has crisp answers to all six, because a good gallery has been asked before. I answer these across my own desk, and the artists who ask them go up in my estimation, not down.

Every clause is a decision

That is the whole discipline. Contracts and consignment agreements are not formalities standing between you and the opportunity. They are the opportunity, defined. Read them like it.

And if there is a real contract or a consignment agreement in front of you right now, this is the single best use of a Power Hour I know: one hour, one to one with me, reading your actual document, clause by clause, before you sign.

Keep reading in this series: Who Owns Your Art? · Licensing Your Art in Plain Language · Someone Copied Your Art. Here Is the Ladder. · Brand Protection for Artists

This article is education from the gallery floor, not legal advice. Contract law and artist consignment statutes vary by state and country. For a significant agreement, or any dispute already underway, spend the hour with an art lawyer.