Representation & artist independence

There are exactly two arrangements. An artist can move between them, but at the moment of any given sale a work sits in one or the other.

This is the knot at the centre of your question, so we make it explicit. A profile and a representation are two different things:

• The artist profile — the public page, the biography, the images, the follower relationships — belongs to the artist. Copyright to the work never leaves them.
• The representation is a link the gallery attaches to that artist: “we represent this person and co-list their work.”

So “taking your profile and running it yourself” isn’t the artist prying something out of the gallery’s hands. It’s the artist removing the gallery as a representative from a profile that was always theirs. The gallery loses the link, not the person.

Order of operations on every represented sale:

1. Buyer pays; funds are held in escrow.
2. Lacuna’s tiered platform commission comes off the top.
3. The remainder is divided between gallery and artist by the split configured in the gallery dashboard for that artist (e.g. 50 / 50, 60 / 40 to the artist, etc.).
4. Each party is paid out to their own registered account once delivery clears.

Traditional galleries commonly take 40–50% of the sale on top of everything. The point of doing it on Lacuna is that the split is explicit, agreed and visible to both sides — no back-office mystery.

The artist ends the representation from their settings. Here is exactly what changes — and what deliberately does not change overnight:

1. 1

   Future sales — yes, they go direct

   Any work sold after the representation ends is a Path A sale: platform commission only, no gallery share. This is the “artist keeps more” part, and it’s real.

2. 2

   Already-completed sales — untouched

   Money from past sales is already split and paid. Nothing is clawed back or re-opened.

3. 3

   Works on consignment — stay with the gallery

   Pieces the gallery physically holds, or that the gallery uploaded and owns, remain gallery inventory. The artist takes their own works with them; they can’t pull works that aren’t theirs to pull.

4. 4

   In-flight deals — honour the tail

   A buyer the gallery introduced, or a work the gallery is actively showing, is still a gallery-assisted sale for a limited window after departure. See the tail below.

The tail is what stops the loophole hiding inside your question — the fear that an artist builds a collector base through a gallery and then leaves the day before a big sale to avoid the split.

So for a defined period after the representation ends (commonly 3–6 months, set in the agreement), the gallery still earns its share on:

• works that were on consignment with the gallery at the time of departure;
• sales to a collector the gallery introduced and can evidence;
• works the gallery was actively exhibiting when the artist left.

Once the tail expires, the artist is fully independent on everything. The tail is a fixed, fair hand-off — not a permanent leash.

A gallery is not entitled to an artist forever. It is entitled to be paid for the sales it genuinely made happen. After a departure the gallery keeps:

• its share of all past sales (unchanged);
• its share on consignment and gallery-introduced sales through the tail;
• ownership of works it bought or uploaded as its own inventory;
• its exhibitions, private-collection records and its own collector relationships.

It does not keep: the artist’s profile, their copyright, their followers, or any claim on work the artist makes and sells independently after the tail. Losing an artist costs the gallery future upside — not a windfall it never earned.