The most evident is the capacity of a gallery to store the works of a good cross-section of artists, which neither collectors nor artists are able to provide. The art gallery also helps store works of artists that would otherwise be destroyed.

As such, a large number of galleries helps to preserve a greater number of works of art. This, in turn, increases the number of objects that help people think better and takes the quality of life to a higher level. This role of the gallery is visible in the much better understanding buyers of art have today as to what to buy after the art boom of the 1980s and the gallery boom that accompanied it. This gallery stock has been of great help to the buyer.

Another important service a good gallery provides is in the resale of works of collectors, so that they are not constrained to goaround hawking individual works on the secondary market. The gallery owner is essentially like a share-broker for the art investor. That, however, has its own problems. Not every share-broker places the client's interest above his own.

And the art market is worse off in that regard, as there are virtually no rules governing it. Often, gallery owners act like shopkeepers, willing to sell anything to anyone at any price. Therefore, the buyer is advised to know what he wants for consulting the gallery owner is not advisable.

There are, however, art consultants of various kinds, who regard their reputation as good advisors on art sales as an important element of their presence. They can be trusted. They may also be gallery owners, but they are running establishments that are different from mere art shops. Buyers are advised to study the gallery owner's approach to accessing, storing and selling paintings. Only if he treats art as more than a mere commodity can the buyer rely on his advice.

The buyer is alsoadvised to look at the stock of works a gallery has, study the quality and state of preservation of the works and ascertain their authenticity. It is advisable that the buyer pay a good deal of attention to the question of authenticity as any work bought from a gallery does not automatically qualify it as authentic. There are galleries that are known to have put up works for sale that they know to be fakes. To protect himself, the buyer must ensure that a certificate of authenticity as well as of provenance is furnished by the gallery with every purchase. This will help enormously in strengthening the infrastructure of the art market and help the artist, gallery owner and buyer alike.

This process of authentication in the field of contemporary art is relatively foolproof as artists like M F Husain and Ganesh Pyne are always happy to authenticate their works. But still problems do occur as when two Souzas appeared in the hands of two gallery owners, each claiming authenticity. From this angle, the buyer canalways choose to buy works of artists who are still alive and among them, of those genuinely concerned with identifying their works as authentic.

For works of artists no longer alive, the buyer can only rely on the provenance and a gallery with a good reputation is as good a provenance as one can hope for. Certainly, galleries such as Art Heritage in Delhi, with sound cataloguing techniques and a proper record of works that they have dealt with, provide as good a provenance as any.

The buyer is therefore advised to see what record a gallery keeps of the works in which it has dealt. Galleries that keep a full record of works are obviously more reliable than those that do not, for buying works that are not merely for interior decoration.

Another positive aspect of the gallery structure is the fact that in practice, galleries develop specialisations over time. In Delhi, for example, to buy a work of Sailoz Mookerjee, one is advised to go to the Dhoomimal Art Gallery in Connaught Place, while the DelhiGallery specialises in works of the Bengal School and early Shantiniketan art.

The best stockists of the well-known Mumbai group artists, including M F Husain, Tyeb Mehta and V S Gaitonde, are Vadheras, while the Village Gallery has the best range of works of Ganesh Pyne, though the widest range of his work is still with Kejriwal in Calcutta and Mukund Lath in Jaipur.

The gallery system is helpful to the art market as it allows a stock of work to be housed and preserved, gives the investor a wider choice of works as well as a reliable secondary market, helps to authenticate them and even provides specialised collections of particular artists for sale.

On the negative side, where the gallery is merely an art shop, the gallery owner promotes almost anything that is bought cheaply and sold dear. This may even ruin the art market with indiscriminate sale of works that have no value at all in the secondary market or lead to the sale of fakes for immediate profit. One can hope also that, perhaps, a code ofconduct will be developed by gallery owners, artists and collectors together.

Be that as it may, till then, the collector will have to keep his eyes open and guard his interests himself, just as artists and gallery owners do.