In our new series Ask an Expert, we’re speaking to the specialists who help design firms thrive. This week, we spoke with Courtney Bohman and Kim Glenn of the Greenville, South Carolina, art consultancy Art Houzze.
What started as an informal roving pop-up designed to spotlight regional artists has transformed into a full-fledged firm that’s taken Bohman and Glenn to art fairs across the world and landed them both residential and commercial clients. Here, the partners talk about navigating that evolution, how they work with interior designers, and what questions they always ask their clients.
You both had careers in other sectors prior to Art Houzze. How did you end up founding this business?
Courtney Bohman: I started by hosting art parties. I would bring pieces from Greenville artists that were looking for exposure in new cities. I would organize an art party at the home of someone in another city—let’s say Charleston or Atlanta—who was sort of a socialite in the community. We would have wine and champagne, and people would come in and browse and purchase the art. I did that for about a year and a half, and then got to a point where I felt like I needed to pivot the business model. We became art consultants—the middleman between the artist, the designer (if there is one) and the end user. Kim joined me around that time. We met through friends. When we first started the business, we were trying to help regional artists with their sales and exposure. What we do now are more full-scale projects, whether it’s commercial properties—hotels, restaurants, office spaces—or high-end residential homes. [Our fee is] a percentage of the sale.
What were your backgrounds prior to this?
Bohman: My background was in sales, marketing and promotions for the home healthcare industry. I owned my own company for 17 years, which is why I always say I’m a left-brain and right-brain person. I started Art Houzze on the side, and when it started taking off, I eventually sold that first business to focus on the new one.
Kim Glenn: My background was also in business. Most of my career was in project management for a company that made CoverGirl cosmetics. I’ve always been a creative person and appreciate art, and so this is like a dream job because we get to do the business side and the creative side while we’re helping artists. It’s very rewarding.
How did you make those relationships with artists?
Bohman: When we first started, we spent a lot of time going to independent studios, which we have a lot of here in Greenville, and going to galleries to introduce ourselves and explain our business so that when we called them and needed art, they would understand how we could work together on a project. We also spend a lot of time at Art Basel Miami and Art Palm Beach. There’s a big art festival show in Atlanta. We spend a lot of time doing outreach and scouting. Also, Kim and I travel extensively, so whenever we’re somewhere new, we’ll spend time going out and meeting artists.
Glenn: We just got back from London, and while we were there, we visited Wimbledon Art Studios. There were some artists sitting outside, and we just walked up to them, introduced ourselves and said, “Hey, we’re here from the States, and this is what we do.” Of course, they looked at us like we were crazy. But we went in and saw their art. Once they started looking at our Instagram and seeing that we’re doing a lot of big projects, they started going, “Oh, come to my studio. Come see my work.”
We met a lot of hardworking up-and-coming artists in the London area, and we tend to do that when we travel. We love meeting artists directly so that we can learn about them, their personalities, their way of working. It always makes art more interesting to understand more about the artist themselves or the story behind it. It also helps us sell it to the client. The client is always interested in the artist. We also want to know our clients and their style [in order to match them with the right pieces].
How do interior designers fit into your workflow?
Bohman: I’ll give you an example. [For Hotel Hartness] we worked hand in hand with the designers [Sims Patrick Studio]. They would send us the blueprints, all of their design samples, their color schemes, and we worked off of that. Luckily, that hotel was in Greenville, so we could actually go to the site and look at things. But the great thing about what we do is that we do not ever have to step foot on a property to curate for it. We can get enough information from the designers to curate for a space no matter where it is.
What is some of that information that you get?
Glenn: Their design boards, their budget, the architectural renderings, the floor plans, the locations and the sizes that they need, the style that they’re looking for—all of that helps us come up with ideas. Our purpose is to help designers. A lot of them like selecting art themselves, but they simply don’t have the time. They’ve got so many other things going on, and we can help alleviate some of that workload as a part of their team. We do all the legwork. They give us all the criteria, all the specifications, everything we need to find the art. We present it to them—make sure this is what they’re looking for, and that it fits with their design and aesthetic that they want for their client’s space. We often work with the artist directly, so the designer doesn’t have to. Because a lot of times when you are working directly with artists, you have a lot of conversations, negotiations, things like that, and have to stay on top of them for timing.
Bohman: It’s project management and procurement. We handle all of that, and we take care of all the shipping and framing and installation. We’ve worked with designers on a lot of residential homes, and we work together as a team. We can introduce them to a lot of artists that they would probably have never found. Some designers tend to stay with the same artists, which is great, but we also want to expand those selections.
How involved are the designers in the actual selection process, or does it vary?
Bohman: Normally, we work directly with the designer if that’s what they want. If they want to hand us off to their client, we do that as well. It’s really up to them, but we start with all their specifications, and then we present a full concept with multiple options per location. We filter that down to the top two or three, and then we get pricing, and if we need to get specific sizes, we commission those pieces. If it needs to be framed, which most of the time it does, the designer approves the frame choice, and we try to make it as simple and easy as possible.
How have you balanced selecting regional artists with a broader mix?
Glenn: We love supporting our local artists. We’ve gotten really close to a lot of them. But there are clients who want different looks. Traveling and meeting artists everywhere just opens up our portfolio. And our clients are from all over too, not just from Greenville. We’ve got clients all over the country. But we’re champions of emerging artists. We’re not selling the Picassos and the Batistes. That’s not really what we do. We want to introduce our clients to the artists where we’re like, “Oh my gosh, we met this one artist. He 100 percent is going to do something. We feel like you really need a piece of his.” I think that’s one thing that our clients are starting to pick up on and why they’re starting to use us because they’re like, “We would like some new emerging artists,” and they ask us, “Who’s hot in London right now?” or “Who’s hot in Spain?” We had clients that had gotten engaged in Australia, so we found an artist from Australia.
How is what you do different from a designer or a homeowner going to a gallery?
Glenn: We have a bigger selection. Don’t get me wrong—we love galleries. They do a great job, but they’re limited to the artists that they represent, and we’ve had artists approach us about representing them, and that’s just not what we do. The world is open to us because whatever our client needs, we want to be able to go anywhere around the world to find the perfect piece of art for that client.
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