Texas ❤️ Art

We are excited for the return of the Texas Contermporary in Houston. The fair was postponed last year due to Hurricane Harvey recovery efforts, and our hearts went out to our friends who suffered losses. Houston has always shown amazing love and support for modern and contemporary art. We will be visiting excellent galleries like Inman and the world class collections of the MFA, the Menil Collection and others. At the fair, our clients will be using Primer to do immediate follow ups, place holds, invoice sales, and offer work that is offsite. No time consuming pre-fair prep needed. Artworks can be linked to the art fair page, and it's a snap to make pricelists, offers, work labels, invoices and more. Link contacts who visit the booth and make notes -- they will automatically appear on the contacts' pages as well. As always, Primer strives to help art galleries, art collections and artists work better and smarter.

Featured feature: Offers

Primer users find it takes mere seconds to put together professional offers documents that can be emailed directly from Primer. These pdfs feature full page images with captions and the option to show price, as well as custom headers and footers. Combined with Primer's CRM features that help determine who and what to offer, Primer can help you become a more proactive promoter of the artworks that you love. Contact us to set up a phone call or video chat to learn more about how Primer can help you sell more work anytime, anywhere.

Aspen

Aspen in July is amazing in many ways including contemporary art. The Primer team will be in Aspen July 26-29 to visit Art Aspen, galleries such as Baldwin, the fabulous Aspen Art Museum, as well as the artists in residence at Anderson Ranch. We will also visit with Primer clients who will be able to access their crucial information while in Aspen or wherever their summer takes them. If you will be at Aspen, we would be happy to schedule a demonstration of our gallery and artist databases.

Aspen Art Museum

Photo by Michael Moran / OTTO, Courtesy of Aspen Art Museum

San Francisco

One of our favorite cities to visit in the summer is San Francisco. We never miss the incredible galleries located at the Minnesota Street Project in the Dogpatch including Adrian Rosenfeld and Altman Siegal. Among our favorite museums are SF MoMA, whose collection extends even into its Michelin's starred restaurant "In Situ." Wherever you find yourself this summer, Primer can insure that you have everything you need to be a successful artist or art dealer while on the road. Make offers and invoices from your hotel room. Share artwork or look up a client's address from your iPhone in the back of a taxi. Consign in new work while you are at the artist's studio. Primer inventory database allows you to be efficient and effective.

installation of works by Tucker Nichols featured at in situ, the restaurant at sf moma, San francisco.

Summer travels

For many in the art world, summer means travel. Some are off to art fairs around the world ranging from Art Basel to the Seattle Art Fair. Others flee the hot cities for more comfortable climates such as the beaches in the Hamptons and the South of France or mountain climates, from Aspen to the Hudson River Valley. Primer's secure cloud hosted database allows you to be instantly prepared wherever you are. Access all your available inventory and your client lists for unexpected requests about available work; immediately respond to a curator's inquiry for possible loans; prepare for your fall exhibitions from your remote hideaway; show up at the art fairs without having to spend hours in advance preparing pdfs or dropbox files. Your information is organized and accessible at all times, whether working on your laptop, iPad or iPhone. Summer can also be a great time to finally make that switch to a truly effective program that assists you in selling and promoting your artwork all year round.

New York City gallery dog, Robert, spends his Augusts in the cool Catskill mountains.

Featured feature: Custom transactions

Primer art software allows our users to manage all their various art world activities and caters to their unique needs, including our custom transaction which faciliates any type of transaction imaginable. Our clients report using this function for an array of activities such as event space rental, commissioning catalogue essays, appraising a client's collection, curatorial projects, artwork rental to a film production and more. You can add artworks, items, or costs/fees to these transactions and you can generate the accompanying document detailng the actvity. Primer's custom transaction completes our offering of 15 standard activities including sales, purchases, consignments, loans, donations, valuations, returns, and more, making Primer the complete management tool for art galleries, artists, art advisors, and art collectors.

Payments to artists and consignors

Primer makes it easy to create payments due to artists and consignors for sold artworks. Each payment transaction also allows you to quickly create a clear payment statement detailing the sales and owed amounts. Like all documents in Primer, you have the ability to make custom edits before saving in a PDF format. Just another facet of managing and tracking all your art related activities with Primer's easy to use functionality. Coming soon: details on our new accounting section that will allow you to analyze your receivables, payables and profitability.

Featured feature: Presentations

This section of Primer allows you to organize and archive any presentations of artwork. Most of our clients use this feature for exhibitions, art fair booths, private salons, curated rooms and the like. Quickly make and edit a variety of related documents including checklists, pricelists, work labels, and full page work previews in any custom order. Edit, save, print and/or email these pdfs directly from the presentation window. Link all contacts who attended the show or transactions, such as sales and offers, related to the event and make a single note that appears on both records. Tap on any image to show in full screen, with the ability to scroll full screen through the entire selection of works. Each individual user can set their own reminders for tasks related to the show. Presentaions are an elegant way to manage and document your exhibition history. One of the many ways that Primer is helping art galleries, art collectors, curators and artists spend more time conceiving and mounting great shows and less time on administration.

A sample presentation page for an art fair booth. Click on a work's image to see in full screen.

Running into the new year!

A huge thank you to our Primer clients, including art galleries, art collections, artists, and art advisors from around the world that made 2017 our best year yet. We traveled to meet new and existing clients in Boston, Berlin, Basel, Denver, Los Angeles, Miami, Nashville, New York, Park City, San Francisco, Santa Fe, and more. We introduced many exciting developments such as Gmail integration, and we heard from clients that Primer has allowed them to streamline their activities from several redundant programs to one focused platform, making them more efficient and cost effective -- in additon to helping them sell more! We look forward to further developments and growth in 2018 as we continue to strive to the best art software, providing our clients with their art inventory management, client relationship manager, exhibition archive, mobile apps, and more. Thank you all for your referrals, feedback, suggestions and kind compliments. Nothing is more important to us than providing excellent and honest customer service.

"Weaver" by Jeff Ladouceur, a Primer Ambassador Artist

NEW feature: enhanced Gmail integration

Primer makes it even easier to track and analyze your history with your contacts, with our Gmail correspondence viewer. Clients who use Gmail or G Suite will be able to review all emails with specific contacts as well as all emails in their general inbox from within Primer itself. Just another way, Primer keeps our clients focused on their workflow, operations and sales. While this special viewer is limited to Gmail, Primer users can still email any documents or images from within Primer using Mac Mail, Outlook, or other web-based emails. Primer is constantly developing to be the best tool to manage your art gallery or art collection, including inventory management, exhibition archives, transactional activities, and as a client relationship manager (CRM).

CRM: Client Relationship Manager

Primer was created exclusively for the art world to act as an inventory management database, an exhibition archive and a CRM, client relationship manager. How is Primer a CRM? Our program includes easy to use, unique features to help you better understand your clients and anticipate which artists and artworks to offer. Contact us to learn more about our client analytics and why a great Los Angeles art gallery recently attested that it previously took three separate programs to accomplish what they now do with Primer.

Let us give you a virtual tour of Primer's client relationship manage and other functions.

Hello San Fran

A big welcome to all our new San Francisco based clients using Primer art software to manage their artwork, clients, exhibitions and transactions. In addition to our everyday virtual tech support, we make routine visits to San Francisco for in-person training and support at clients' galleries and office. Just this week, we were delighted to visit "Patio Music," the new exhibition by Primer ambasssador artist, Tucker Nichols, on view at Gallery 16 through October 28th.

Tucker Nichols installation at Gallery 16, San Francisco

Go West

Heading to Los Angeles on July 12th to visit Primer clients and some of our favorite museums like the Hammer. We are currently hosting great galleries from LA to Seattle on our West Coast Server stored with top rated AWS (Amazon Web Services), also used by major companies like Netflix and Expedia. We always use industry standard encryption to protect our clients' data while it moves over the web, allowing them to work from anywhere with peace of mind. We'll be making stops in cities including San Francisco, Santa Fe and Albuquerque. Contact us if you would like an appointment to see why art galleries, art collections, art advisors, and alternative spaces are using Primer to better (and more affordably) manage all their activities and archives. With Primer, you can store your information securely and still access it without delay.

Image © creativecommonstockphotos

Berlin Art Gallery Tour

Berlin has long established itself as a contempoary art gallery mecca. We are excited to be back in Berlin the week of June 19th. We'll be seeing great shows at top art galleries and alternative art spaces. Primer gives you the freedom to travel the world while still being able to make offers, complete sales and take care of other necessary business. Primer lets you to access your inventory, contacts and manage all your art dealing and art collecting from your computer, iPad and iPhone from any internet connection

Berlin-Mitte in June.

Art Basel, Switzerland June 2018

Another month, another art fair... but not just any fair. June is the time for Art Basel, the world's premier art fair. Primer will be traveling to Basel, Switzerland June 12-18th for our favorite event of the year. We'll also be visiting Liste, Volta, and other concurrent events as well as hosting private demo sessions around the city. Send us an email if you would like to schedule a demo at your art fair booth or elsewhere to see how Primer is enabling our clients to work efficiently from anywhere, including creating and emailing documents like offers and invoices in seconds. Primer art gallery software, art collection software and art software cloud hosting are being used by exceptional galleries, art advisors and private collections around the world to manage their inventory, contacts, transactions, exhibitions, art fairs, and other activities.

Courtesy Art Basel

Meet us during Frieze New York 2017

We look forward to the 2017 edition of Frieze New York and welcoming many of our Primer clients to New York City. They will use Primer throughout the duraction of the art fair, both with collectors and curators to showcase additional works that may not be in the booth and also to create and immediately email sales offers, invoices and client notes via their laptops, iPhones and iPads. Prospective users: we are offering special in-person demos throughout the week. We cater to your art fair schedule, including efficient, early morning appointments at locations throughout the city. Book a private session today and see how Primer art software can change the way you run your art gallery and sell more work.

Frieze New York 2016. Photograph by Mark Blower. Courtesy of Mark Blower/Frieze.

New feature: Tasks/Reminders

We are pleased to announced a major new feature in Primer art software. Now you can create reminders for any record including a contact, artwork, exhibition page, or transaction. For example, you can remind yourself to follow up on a sales offer or to request the return of artwork at the end of a consignment. Or create more extensive tasks that involve multiple records and users. For example, a project such as an artist's catalogue can be accessed by multiple users, list all the details of the job that need to be completed and give multiple reminders about deadlines. Our home page features all your upcoming tasks and reminders. Our thanks to our client Kate MacGarry Gallery for their assistance in developing this feature to make Primer even more useful software for art gallery management and art collection management.

A detail from a homepage featuring a user's tasks and reminders.

Affordable data imports

Many of our clients are initially hesitant to switch to a new art database because they worry about the hassle of importing their crucial data from their old art software. Primer makes it easy and affordable. Our clients have come to us from other companies such as ArtBase, ArtSystems (GalleryPro), ArtLogic, Gallery Manager (exhibit-E), Masterpiece Manager, Art Stacks, and many others. Whether you are frustrated by using a bloated, expensive system or struggling to get by with simple Excel spreadsheets, let us do the import for you. Start saving time and money by using Primer to manage your art gallery or art collection.

Primer helps you make better offers to your clients because you can now visualize their interests.

Armory Week in NYC

Primer Archives continues its art fair tour in New York this March, and we are currently booking appointments for in-person demos. We currently have some availability between Monday February 27 - Friday March 3. We are happy to visit you at the ADAA fair, the Armory Show, Volta, NADA, Independent, Art on Paper, Spring/Break, Scope or wherever might be convenient. We are able to host you at our office, as well. We look forward to showing you how our art software is helping art galleries and art advisors become more profitable and efficient. Primer is more than just an art database and we look forward to showing you why!

Photograph by Teddy Wolff | Courtesy of The Armory Show

Primer video update: Transactions

We have released a newly updated video covering Primer's 15 transactions, including our flexible custom transaction option. This meaty video covers everything from sale to consignment to donation and everything in between. If you need a refresher on a specific topic, use the times stamps listed below the video (be sure to watch on our Vimeo page to use this function). As we continue to enhance Primer to be the best art software for our clients' needs, we will continue to update our instructional videos. 

Sell and invoice your artwork quickly with Primer art software