IT’S GALLERY TIME!

Although the image of the gallerists as the ‘lone wolf’ has been altered by more prominent collaborative manifestations ever since the turn of the century, collaboration among contemporary art galleries remains an opaque field. This thesis seeks to take a first step into the realms of collaboration among contemporary art galleries exploring the phenomena of gallery weekends. Gallery weekends have united the highest numbers of galleries joining forces and thus attracted major attention in the art world over the last years. Approaching this form of interorganisational collaboration as cooperative projectbased alliances among organisations within local proximity, the aim is to identify, compare and contrast underlying significant motivations and structural processes. Following an explorative approach, this comparative multiple-case study employs semi-structured interviews and content analysis as qualitative research methods. Set in the context of Germany, the three gallery weekends OPEN Art in Munich, Gallery Weekend Berlin in Berlin, and DC Open in Cologne and Düsseldorf are investigated. Employing a qualitative research design, data was collected through semi-structured interviews and verified by consulting secondary sources. Key findings reveal that a unified mask ‘gallery weekend’ does not and cannot exist due to their specific local and organisational context and relational structure. Their development has to be seen in close relation to primary factors such as galleries participating, internal factors affecting the alliance as well as its local and regional business reality.