Thanks for the responses.
I don’t know the name of the scammer. The person in the group is the religious one, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the scammer claimed to be religious also. No evidence for that.
This situation was phrased, at the meeting, as God answering her prayers by putting her in contact with this person. I don’t have much to do directly with this person but I’m in a critique group with another very religious person, and my bet is that if I said anything it would be taken as an evil atheist trying to skeptically destroy her faith.
If I get the name of the scammer I’ll look it up. I found one site that has a list of the emails of know art scammers, so it would be interesting to see if the email from the scammer matches.
Ah, next meeting, if this is still going on, maybe I can get the scammee to invite the scammer to the meeting. But I bet anything this is email only at the moment.
It’s not often you run into an innovative scam. I’ll bump the thread if I find out more.
My town is not exactly arty. I don’t think my friend’s concern is money (I think she does sell stuff) but recognition. Hanging in a small gallery here would not do it - some international art person building a museum just for her does. I understand the appeal, but this is a case if it sounds too good to be true, it isn’t.
If she was good at critical thinking - but I mentioned she was an evangelical type, the whole inerrant Bible believing bit. Her bullshit detector failed years ago, I’d bet.
The scams in the link sound similar to publishing scams, which target naive aspiring writers. The scammer places an ad claiming to be a publisher looking for manuscripts. When writers respond, they get back a form letter informing them that their manuscript is weak, and recommend a paid, “third-party” book doctor.
I suspect the real explanation is something like your friend’s benefactor has some wall space available in a space in a local antique mall, and was nice enough to offer your friend a place to hang one or two of her paintings.
Or the “you have a unique look, and I happen to be a modeling agent,” scam.
There are lots of ways to scam an aspiring artist, like “we’ll need to professionally prepare your work for display,” or the “cataloging fee,” or the “you really should carry personal insurance as well as the gallery insurance” fee.
Your friend must be curious about what the museum/gallery will be like. Perhaps the two of you could take a trip to the other museum to see what kind of art is there, how it’s displayed, etc. While there, your friend could get the names of the artists being shown, contact them, and ask them how they’ve been treated.
We’re a reasonably small town, and all the art people know each other, so I don’t think gallery scams would work. This one was specifically building a new museum for her.
As for other scams, there is one where the scammer advertises for babies or others to go into commercials. The scam there is using their photographer to buy expensive head shots.
In fact, babies don’t need head shots, since they change so fast. The most important thing about babies in commercials is how they handle separation from parents. If they cry, they are no good, no matter how cute they are.
For older kids they promise to submit the kids for jobs, and they do, but anyone can. Casting directors are unlikely to go for unknown kids from unknown agents unless it is a really good match.
We went undercover at one of these places, but my wife’s paper was too chicken to run a story about it.
Voyager I checked with my son, who is an artist, and who has also worked at both small and large galleries. He said he’s been personally approached by scammers twice.
Their pitches were almost identical, and sounded sincere until the talk turned to “marketing” his work. At that point they started trying to double-talk him with increasingly expensive options.
According to my son, there are two rules.
A reputable (albeit cheap) museum may ask the artist to pay for shipping the works to and from the display. It will not charge any other kind of display fee.
A reputable gallery makes its money from commissions on the work it sells. The amount of commission is negotiated between the artist and the gallery (and can be quite high for an unknown artist with no bargaining power) but there are no additional charges for “marketing.”
So he hasn’t heard of this particular scam. The ones he describes sound like lots of book marketing maybe scams. The marketer will do all sorts of stuff - for money - for books with limited appeal. I say maybe scam because the marketer will do what he claims, it’s just that the chance for a return is slim.
But the common denominator is always money. The way it’s supposed to work is Party A brings the art, Party B brings the money, venue, exposure, etc. When B starts asking A to invest, it gets fishy.
You know, it’s possible that it’s not an art scam at all. It could be a real estate scam. Christian benefactor gets your artist friend and all her church buddies to donate money for the museum and either disappears immediately or throws a up a $500 porta-building on an empty lot and takes off.
I believe the correct name for this scam is The Monorail.
In my town if she winds up with an empty lot and has paid less than $100K for it, she’d be way ahead. We don’t have a lot of empty lots around here. This is the Bay Area where places that are practically shacks go for half a million bucks.