Dick Youngblood: Dr. Seuss paintings are magical for downtown art gallery

He does not like them, Sam-I-Am, Steve Danko does not like green eggs and ham. But he sure does appreciate the gent who invented that unappetizing menu.

Thanks in large part to the paintings of the late Theodor Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, the downtown Minneapolis art gallery Danko owns with his wife, Jean, has survived a lamentable location and several recessions to remain in business while small galleries by the score have failed nationwide in the past 20 years.

Eight years ago, the Dankos' Jean Stephen Galleries on the Nicollet Mall was named as the Twin Cities' sole representative for limited-edition copies of the illustrations Geisel created to illustrate his rhyming children's classics.

The result: The Dr. Seuss art accounted for fully one third of Jean Stephen's $580,000 in revenue last year, several pieces having sold for $13,000.

"Steve and Jean have done a tremendous job of growing the Dr. Seuss business," said Chris Baum, East Coast sales manager for the Chase Group, the art publisher that produces and markets Geisel's illustrations. "Theirs is one of the top revenue-producing galleries in the country for Dr. Seuss art."

Dr. Seuss isn't the only offering: Jean Stephen also has been designated as the Twin Cities representative for limited-edition prints of works by such popular artists as Yuri (Yuroz) Gevorgian, Anton Arkhipov and Michael Parkes, as well as the sculpture of the late Frederick Hart, who created the sculpture of the three American servicemen at the Vietnam War memorial in Washington, D.C.

Despite such a lineup, survival hasn't come easy. Indeed, that 2007 gross was significantly below the $910,000 the gallery generated in 2006, in part because of the housing slump that began in mid-2006 in California, a key market for the Dankos' Dr. Seuss art. The death of a major buyer who had accounted for more than $200,000 of their 2006 sales didn't help matters.

"You get ups and downs in this business, and it's been like that forever," Steve Danko said. "You just get through it." It has helped that he owns a bachelor's degree in economics, an MBA in finance and a résumé that includes a stint as director of auditing for the Pillsbury Company's largest division.

That background "gave me a good feel for economic trends and when to invest [in art] or not," Danko said. "The value of the art is one factor, but timing the purchase with the economic cycles is a big part of it."

Nonetheless, given the challenges the Dankos have faced since I introduced you to them 20 years ago, shortly after they opened their gallery, it's a wonder they made it at all.

Start with the location: They opened on the fourth level of the spanking new Conservatory, the ill-fated Nicollet Mall shopping complex that had been hailed as the crown jewel of downtown retailing.

Despite promises that the Dankos would soon be surrounded by a throng of upscale shops, the only company they had on their floor during the seven years they stayed there was Goodfellows restaurant.

"There were many, many days when it was very lonely up there," Steve Danko said.

How did they endure? "We started out with a mix of decorative art, then upgraded to higher-priced pieces" that appealed to the well-heeled business crowd that frequented the pricey Goodfellows.

Then a recession in the early 1990s actually helped a bit: "It forced a number of our competitors out of business," Danko said. And the Conservatory's leasing problems helped trim their rent from an initial $2,600 to $700 a month by the time they left in 1994 for a street-level location on the Mall. Whereupon another disruption occurred three years later: Their building was condemned and they had to scramble to find their present location at 917 Nicollet Mall.

Meanwhile, pressures on small regional galleries like Jean Stephen continued, said Kevin Frest, a partner in the San Francisco art publishing firm of Frest and Royce Fine Arts, who had been with the Chase Group when Jean Stephen was recruited as its Twin Cities Dr. Seuss representative.

"This is a tricky business, and there has been a lot of consolidation," he said. But the Minneapolis gallery has survived in large part because "Steve is very smart and a hard worker, and he has a very good eye," Frest said.

An early presence on the Internet also paid dividends: Danko said that about 40 percent of the gallery's new clients were acquired via the Web, and two-thirds of its 2007 sales were generated that way.

But now, with the economy slowing, he's busy tightening the corporate belt: "The business still pays our salaries, rent and bills," he said. "But cash flow is tight and our inventory investment will be down about $60,000 this year.

There is one consolation, however: Some 15 years ago, when I stopped by to see how Danko was doing, he joked that, "While my banker still talks to me, he mostly just laughs."

These days, his banker just talks to him.

Dick Youngblood • 612-673-4439 • yblood@startribune.com