Babysitting

I've spent this week out of town, working in the office of Hedgehog, an old friend and new database customer. He runs a gallery showing puristic no-prisoners-taken contemporary art: heavy on the "meaning", very light on the "pretty". (Also a few things which are actually pretty: some paintings by XYZ are give-my-eye-teeth-for beautiful, but not even a Great White Shark has enough eye teeth to afford them.)

In theory, I was migrating his data from the present system to my database, and that did in fact get done. This always involves a fair amount of massaging and some negotiated sacrifices. Translating data is like translating poetry: There are no exact matches, something always gets lost.

In practice, I've been babysitting his gallery. His regular assistants are both sick, and he was overrun by critics, journalists, current artists in search of reassurance and would-be artists in search of representation, so I had to answer the phones and greet the visitors. I can now rattle out "Gallery Hedgehog, good morning, my name is Udge" with the best of them. It's been great fun, I really enjoyed working there.

It has also been interesting to see how an art gallery really runs.

Hedgehog spends his whole day talking, ten hours long, non-stop. In his few breaks from talking, he writes e-mail messages or sends faxes. That would drive me mad, or hoarse, but he seems to thrive on it.

I was surprised how few visitors there were. Only amateurs like myself visit art galleries. The business of art revolves around the telephone and the website, not the physical gallery. The big collectors, those regular customers who pay Hedgehog's rent, expect and receive service: Hedgehog makes a selection of works and takes them to the collectors' homes and offices, where they hang for a week or so "on probation".

There was one amusing incident: Another gallerist phoned up to warn us that a Noted Critic would be arriving unannounced shortly, we should clean up and get the press kit ready. The other gallerist is in theory a competitor who would gladly steal away Hedgehog's big collectors (and vice versa), but critics are a public resource and a common danger: All galleries are damaged if one makes a fool of itself in public. Hedgehog tickled out the name of Noted Critic's next destination, and passed on the warning.