Hello and welcome to the inaugural issue of The Other Side of the Desk, a series of discussions about contemporary art and artists from the perspective of an art world insider with roots in both gallery business and independent curating. My interest in art and artists originates from a family background in the gallery business. I love art and recognize artists as passionate individualists. Yet I also recognize and affirm the fact that they are willing participants in a “culture industry” that employs galleries, collectors, critics, and curators to maintain a community to support and promote art and artists. Artists who have played any role in this community are all competing for the prize of professional success. It’s not pie-in-the-sky glory. The gallery provides a social construct that includes, in a majority of cases, an introduction to basic professional relationships that are aimed at furthering the careers of artists while at the same time expanding the purview of the gallery itself into broader contexts of cultural authority.