The Portland Art Museum’s rental gallery has been operating on the same business model since its inception in 1959. In the 1950s, the Portland Art Museum was the city’s art school as well as a gallery. They opened the rental gallery to showcase local artists’ works, and they’ve been offering rentals and sales ever since.
Mark Tindle has been the head of the rental sales gallery since 2021, and he joins us to share more about the gallery and its unique model.
The current showcase on display at the rental gallery is a collaboration with OPB’s Oregon Art Beat, featuring local artists who have been featured on the program. The exhibit is up in the rental gallery until July 11.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. The Portland Art Museum’s rental sales gallery has been operating on the same business model since its inception in 1959. It showcases local artists’ works and makes that work available for rent or sale. The current show at the rental gallery is a collaboration with OPB’s Oregon Art Beat. It’s made up of work from artists who have been featured on the program. The exhibit is up through July 11.
Mark Tindle has been the head of the gallery since 2021, and he joins us now. It’s great to have you on the show.
Mark Tindle: Thank you Dave, it’s an absolute pleasure to be here.
Miller: What is the basic model of this gallery? I gave the one-sentence version. What’s the longer version?
Tindle: The heart of it is, every single work of art that’s in the gallery – and we’ve got about 1,300 pieces in the gallery right now – we make available both for sale, like a conventional commercial art gallery, but also three-, six-, nine-month rental periods, as well. So a client comes in, they can make a single payment and they can rent an artwork for a quarter of a year.
Miller: Why? Why make these works of art available on a short-term basis?
Tindle: At the heart of it, it’s about creating accessibility to fine art. That’s really the heart of our mission. Fine art is the most beautiful, wonderful thing. All the pieces we sell and rent are all originals, but that’s not always available to everybody. That’s not in everybody’s budget. That’s not something perhaps everyone feels comfortable with. The idea of committing so much money to [a] piece. For renting it for a fraction of the purchase price, you can bring it into your home, you can bring it into your business, you can try it out. A lot of our clients experiment with pieces. They keep renting different ones and maybe they find one that they fall in love with. Having it on your wall is the most perfect way to know that it’s the one that you love.
Miller: How common is this model, this gallery model, around the country?
Tindle: It’s not that common. I think it used to be more common, but we’ve seen them kind of fade away over time. So Portlanders are very lucky that we have a gallery that offers a model [like this]. When I arrived in Portland and started working at the gallery, I was like, “why is this not everywhere, this is brilliant!”
Miller: Can you give us a sense for the range of art that is included in the gallery?
Tindle: Absolutely. And we take a lot of pride in having one of the richest ranges of art available anywhere in the city and beyond. We represent over 180 artists, they’re all from the Pacific Northwest. The vast majority of them are Portlanders, and they’re working in the widest range of mediums possible. We’ve got 2D art in acrylics, oils and watercolors. We’ve got 3D art, artists working in ceramics and metal, glass, wood. It’s so rich, the range when you come in. That’s really part of the excitement of this.
Miller: What about the range of prices for rentals, say?
Tindle: So we deliberately place the rental prices in a very accessible point. The lowest rental price we charge is about $50. The majority of the pieces that we rent would fall probably somewhere in the sort of $200 to $250 for three months. And we’ve got ones that get more expensive – the rental prices essentially increase as the purchase prices increase. But we deliberately set them to be very much accessible to as many people as possible.
Miller: And in general, how long are people renting these for? So three months is the first length. How many people say, “I want another three months?”
Tindle: I’d say the vast majority of our clients. Most people who come in will rent it for three months. Some just rent it for six months right off the bat. It’s like, “yep, I think I’m gonna want this one for half a year.” But the majority of our clients, when we give them a call or ping them an email to say, “Hey, the rental period is coming to an end. Let’s just do it for another three months.”
But we do have some clients who part of their life is to be cycling the art every season. We have this couple that come in – I think they have six or seven pieces – every time they rent for three months, then they’ll come in, pick another seven for three months.
Miller: And how long have they been doing that for?
Tindle: Oh, they’ve been doing it as long as I’ve been in the gallery, so certainly five or six years, I guess even longer. They’re regulars.
Miller: It’s almost like they’re treating their home as their own little art museum, and they have three-month shows that just cycle through.
Tindle: I think that’s exactly how they see it. The ability to change the art seasonally, I think, is something that they really enjoy. And that works really well for our business partners, as well, because we work with a lot of corporate clients across the city, too. So people bring fine art into their offices, into their meeting rooms, into their public spaces. That ability to cycle through works is something that I think that really appeals to a lot of people.
Miller: I’m curious what you hear though, specifically, not from those commercial institutional customers, but from the individuals. What kinds of stories do you hear from regular people about what having this art means to them?
Tindle: It’s this ability to have something that is unique, something that is beautiful, original, completely special to them, and be able to bring it into their space at such a fraction of the purchase price. And to have that relaxation of knowing that, “oh, I can experiment with this, I can try it in my space and I can see.” That’s the feedback I get so often is people just get this joy from knowing that they can see if this is what they really want. And that ability to change it out is fantastic, and the opportunity to see how it works in their home. That’s the hard one – it’ll look one way in the gallery, then you take it home and put it on your wall, and you can see if that’s the one that you truly love.
Miller: And then some people do end up buying them?
Tindle: Yes, it’s such a rewarding thing. It’s such a great feeling when a client is either in the gallery or I’m on the phone with them and they’re just like, “I love this piece.” Sometimes people know right off the bat that they’re going to love it. A number of times I’ve had someone walk out the door with the artwork saying, “Yeah, you’re not going to see this one again. I just need to make sure that it’s going to be it.”
One of the most fun conversations is when the client’s like, “yeah, I didn’t expect to love this like I do,” but they’ve had that time to live with it, and it’s gotten under their skin. I literally had one client say, “You know, I took it off the wall to bring it back to you today, and I didn’t like how my wall looked anymore. So I guess I’ve got to buy this.”
Miller: An idea that just popped into my mind is people who foster rescue animals and then say, “You know what? I’m actually going to adopt this animal.”
Tindle: I think there’s something in that, because a work of art, an original work of art, has a personality. Because it is part of the artists themselves that they have put into it, and you bring it into your home. So it provokes an emotional reaction in you. I think just in the same way that humans, pets and other kinds of objects, because there’s something deeply real about it, you feel that same way.
Miller: So it’s been clear, talking to you, what clients get from this. What about artists? What would artists get from being a part of your gallery that they wouldn’t get from a traditional gallery?
Tindle: I think it’s this accessing of a demographic and accessing of a market that perhaps they wouldn’t otherwise get through a gallery that only focuses on sales. This ability to have this like regular rhythm of rentals going out, making income every month from that, this opportunity to place artworks with individuals or clients who will rent, but then maybe buy them in the end. And what we also give them is a brick and mortar gallery space in downtown Portland that is associated with the Portland Art Museum. With the museum having recently fully reopened post-redevelopment, it’s a great space to be connected with. And I think people love and respond to that.
Miller: Is it either/or? If they’re represented by your rental gallery, can they not be represented by other galleries?
Tindle: No, we actively encourage our artists to show at as many galleries as they want to. Our artists sell their own works themselves as they so choose to. They’ll have a gallery representation. I love the idea of our artists being shown at different spaces. I think it’s a rising sort of tide, it raises everybody to have that and that visibility is nothing but a good thing.
Miller: Does it ever happen that somebody has rented a work of art and they somehow damage it?
Tindle: It does happen. It happens so rarely. That’s the wonderful thing is that people take such great care. People are so respectful and so gentle and that we get asked such great questions about what the best way to ensure that they’re taking care of it is. If accidents happen, and they do happen, we’ll always work with the client to fix it. We’ll always work with them to either have the artist come and make the repairs, we’ll take it to a framer, we’ll get it reglazed, whatever it takes. Obviously, the client is liable for covering the cost of it, but we’re never punitive. It’s all about like, this is life, these things happen, we’ll help you fix this.
Miller: What has it meant to you personally to be connecting these two groups [with art], people who live here [and] people who made it here?
Tindle: It’s the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done. I love this job. I love this opportunity, to bring such beautiful special things into people’s homes, but also to have those interactions and be able to tell stories to clients about what the artist is all about, what was happening when they created this piece, what story did they tell me. I think that’s wonderful. But then I can feed back to the artist. It’s one of the best emails I get to send when I say, “Hey, good news. The client who rented your piece has bought it.” That is such an amazing feeling to get to give out to artists. I go in every day and I feel really good and really rewarded because of that.
Miller: Have you ever been a client yourself? Have you ever rented works of art?
Tindle: I have not rented any of the pieces myself, but I have bought several from our artists. I’ve commissioned a few pieces, as well. It’s very hard not to fall in love with the works you see and then, “Oh, I think I want my own version of this.”
Miller: Mark, it’s a pleasure talking to you, thanks very much.
Tindle: Thank you.
Miller: Mark Tindle is the head of the Portland Art Museum’s rental sales gallery. He’s been the head of it since 2021.
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