I was having trouble sleeping and suddenly had an idea while thinking about the new consignment shops: art shows. In real life artists frequently show off their work at shows held at art galleries to gain a bigger reputation among the art community, meet other artists, and sell their work.

In the Sims game, both painters and sculptors could rent a space at the art gallery to set up an art show. There could be an initial price paid by the Sim to rent the space, then each visitor to the show pays for admission (part of that admission would go to the gallery, part would go to the artist, maybe?). While at the show, others Sims could mingle, view your work, you could make friends with other artists, and other Sims would even purchase your art.

What does everyone else think? Other ideas?

That is a very good idea.
It adds depth to how the art gallery may make money.

I was under the impression the Art Gallery is kind of publicly funded .

The idea of holding art exhibitions is quite good, there is already an opportunity where your sim goes to an exhibition (I think it's held at the Business workplace though) but it doesn't actually show anything. They could add this in as part of the new way of registering your skills as a job, so sims who are registered artists/sculptors get this option in a similar way to the autograph signing options for sims in the "famous" careers. You could have the option to mark which items are for sale and which are just for viewing so that you don't accidentally sell the ones you wanted to keep but can still benefit from them.

Of course I doubt they've got this in the expansion but it would be cool if they added it in the future .

A great way to do this would be to use renovation mode as part of the opportunity. So artists with a high enough sculpture/painting skill could edit a room in the Art Gallery to hold their exhibition, with the exhibition room operating as a temporary consignment store. All items would remain on display until the exhibition ended, at which point those sold would whiz off to the new owners, and those not sold would return to the artist's inventory.

Ihartsnape,

I've read on several occasions that sims will be able to buy community lots in Ambitions. Maybe if one of your sims is an artist and has enough money he could buy a community lot and set up a private art gallery that other sims would pay to see.

thats a great idea