First Day of the Year I Am Happy to Announce the Opening of My First Art Store

  • Introduction
  • 1. What You Like
  • 2. Research
  • 4. Ask Questions
  • 5. Waiting List
  • half-dozen. Success!

How to Buy a Work of Art

David Teniers the Younger, "Archduke Leopold William in His Picture Gallery in Brussels" (1651). Museo del Prado, Madrid. Erich Lessing/Fine art Resources, NY

The question posed by the headline is, in theory, easy enough. The sheer volume of art being sold across the world each year is far greater than at any point in human history. At that place was a 22 per centum drop in global sales of art and antiques in 2020 — to all of $l.1 billion. Those figures, the most apparent information on this topic that be — and this solitary will say a lot about the art world for the uninitiated — come from an annual report by the economist Clare McAndrew funded and released past Art Basel, a contemporary art fair, and its corporate partner UBS, the Swiss multinational financial services company and 1 of the largest individual banks in the world, which past comparison reported $32.39 billion in acquirement in 2020. Simply let's just say it's a lot of money changing easily. For one concluding comparing: $fifty billion is also the price proposed by the International Monetary Fund to cover its global plan to combat Covid-19.

But the fact is that buying art is not so obvious. Having an expendable income at all in the year 2021 is a difficult proffer for the vast majority of people. But if you are someone who has been lucky enough to maintain steady employment during the pandemic (last April, the U.S. unemployment rate reached the highest level since the Swell Depression), and y'all take some extra money lying effectually and have spent the final yr looking at the blank walls of your home with encroaching malaise — simply having that coin doesn't automatically translate into owning a work of art. Where do you begin? What should you look at? The art world is no picnic, either, and if you've e'er felt alienated or intimidated walking into a gallery, take comfort in knowing you're not alone. It's not unusual for a first-time art buyer to approach a gallery and be asked, without whatever irony, what other art they have in their collection. And given the extreme variability of prices, which can ascension substantially overnight based on the results of a secondary market sale at an auction business firm, it'south hard to even know what something should price, and why. Trends arrive quickly and burn out just every bit fast. (If you lot can't recall any of the names associated with something called zombie formalism, or if you're fifty-fifty a niggling fuzzy on the term itself, one time over again you're also not alone.) Speaking of which, the world of cryptocurrency entered the high end of the art market for the offset fourth dimension this twelvemonth, when an NFT — honestly, don't ask — created by a 39-year-old creative person known as Beeple sold for $69.three million at a Christie's auction. Ten days afterwards, Cameron Winklevoss, who, together with his twin blood brother, Tyler, has been estimated to ain over $2 billion in cryptocurrency, posted a message on Twitter: "NFTs liberate art. Traditional art is bars to time and space. You accept to be in the right metropolis, become to a museum, be invited to someone'due south home, etc. Anyone, anywhere with an internet connection tin can view NFTs and take them in. This is a huge quantum." Anyway, I'yard certain all of that is going to end well for everyone involved. What I mean is, in that location are a lot of means — even new means — to spend money on art, and mayhap not all of them are for you lot!

As an introduction and guide to this globe, we've asked experts — collectors, gallery owners, art dealers, artists, directorate — a theoretically like shooting fish in a barrel question: How do y'all buy a work of art? Here's what they had to say. — M.H. Miller

Interviews by:
Andrew Russeth and Megan O'Grady
With advice from:
Lorenzo Atkinson
Collector
Ashley Carr
Co-founder, Modica Carr Art Advisory
Eleanor Cayre
Art adviser
Brian Donnelly, a.one thousand.a., KAWS
Artist and collector
Bridget Finn
Co-founder, Reyes | Finn gallery
Heather Flow
Fine art adviser
James Fuentes
Owner, James Fuentes gallery
Denise Gardner
Collector and board chair-elect, the Art Institute of Chicago
Ebony L. Haynes
Director, David Zwirner gallery
Alexis Johnson
Partner, Paula Cooper Gallery
Maggie Kayne
Fine art dealer, Kayne Griffin
Monique Meloche
Art dealer, Monique Meloche Gallery
Suzanne Modica
Co-founder, Modica Carr Art Informational
Valeria Napoleone
Collector and patron
Mary Rozell
Global head, UBS Art Collection, and writer of "The Art Collector'due south Handbook" (2020)
Ann Schaffer
Patron and collector
Jessica Wessel
Attorney and collector
Interviews have been edited and condensed.

1. Figure Out Your Taste and What You Similar

Hendrick Bloemaert, "Erstwhile Adult female Selling Eggs" (1632). The Picture Fine art Collection/Alamy Stock Photo

Ann Schaffer

Starting time of all, y'all accept to visit a lot of galleries and museum shows and meet with artists. I guess if I were to pick one word, information technology would be "exposure." And you lot never should limit yourself to art that yous think yous're going to like. When y'all go this constant exposure, specially to things that you don't think you're going to similar, it leads to a sure discovery, then then you learn what it is that you react to.

Brian Donnelly

You but have to follow your lead, y'all know? I think the only reason to collect is to follow your ain interests. And information technology's funny, once people know that you collect, some things kind of shake out of the trees and land in front end of you lot.

Ebony L. Haynes

Perhaps y'all don't feel continued to — or you don't savor speaking to — gallery staff, or y'all still feel like in that location'south a bulwark there for you, then mayhap you await online. Don't go too caught up in the definitive purchase and invoice moment, but actually enjoy the procedure of discovering what it is you can afford, or you'd like to live with. Information technology takes a scrap of time.

James Fuentes

I used to tell people just to pound the pavement, and to meet as many galleries as they tin can maybe encounter — if you want to exist a very informed collector, just try to develop an encyclopedic knowledge of what's going on, get the lay of the land. That's very fourth dimension-consuming, and if you lot've got a 9-to-5, it's gonna be a slower process. But now I would suggest that, in addition to pounding the pavement, they should also exist doing the equivalent with researching and learning about artists' O.Five.R.s [online viewing rooms, accessible through most galleries' websites], where content is offered beyond the galleries' physical spaces. A lot of people have stepped upward their presence online, and it was simply a matter of time. When I opened in 2007, even back then we used to check how many people were looking at the website every day. And while we would have peradventure three people in the gallery on a good day back then, I could have perhaps 300 people look at our website from all over the world. So the O.V.R. is just an acquittance of that. And then there are the more full general, immersive opportunities to learn near art, which are the biennials, the fairs, the Bushwick studio fine art day [Bushwick Open Studios] or something like that. In that location are ever opportunities to see a hundred different artists in a single day. Time is very precious, merely a collector can get into the mind-set up where looking at art can be benign to their health — the time spent doesn't matter because it tin be a joy.

Ann Schaffer

I actually can't mention the artist, because if you ever print it, I'd be in problem. But we bought ane artist at a gallery and paid very piddling, and I said, "I don't sympathize what anybody would desire to purchase this for," just I had this instinct that information technology was going to exist something that was going to be hyped up. So I bought it, and I put it in my closet. And then I sold information technology. … And I made a really nice profit. And that aforementioned piece has since gone for well over a meg dollars. Merely I didn't like it. It was the only fourth dimension I e'er bought something that I didn't similar, simply I bought it for a reason. And it was just to see if I was right about the hype.

Eleanor Cayre

People say buy what you love, just I don't detect this to be such helpful advice when talking to a new collector, particularly i who is collecting the fine art of our time made by artists of their own generation. You need to find what you dear, of course, but the process shouldn't end there. I oftentimes tell my clients: "If you love an creative person or artwork the showtime fourth dimension you encounter it, it'south probably because it reminds you of something else you can't afford!" When it comes to new art, familiar is not the feeling we should be looking for. If we look dorsum at history, nosotros can see that the best art of its time was never comfortable or familiar. Don't be scared to buy something you don't fully understand.

James Fuentes

It's so cliché, but if y'all follow your heart, if yous make a buy of an artwork that doesn't increment in value but is something that you love and brings you joy, then yous've won. The fact that the market is here or there doesn't matter.

Lorenzo Atkinson

I've had moments where I was like, "OK, you should buy this considering information technology's a expert investment, and yous never know where information technology's going to go." And then that piece is never something that I enjoy looking at.

Monique Meloche

At that place are plenty of lists out in that location that will tell y'all: "Here are the top v artists this week on Artsy," "Here are the tiptop five artists at this sale," just information technology's not like, "here's the best stereo system." You have to trust yourself more than because you tin't continue Yelp and figure out what artist you're going to buy.

2. Practise Your Research

Rembrandt, "The Money Changer" (1627), oil on oak, Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen, Berlin. bpk-Bildagentur/Art Resource, NY. Photo: Christoph Schmidt

Ebony L. Haynes

Don't experience like yous take to do a lot of enquiry around the marketplace. If that's what you're looking at, information technology's the wrong reason to start, from my perspective. I know there are people who are in it for that reason, but all y'all take to recollect is to buy what you desire to await at and live with.

Denise Gardner

I believe in doing a bit of homework. Educating yourself and reading up near the kind of fine art you lot're interested in is really essential. There are a lot of neat books about fine art. I call back of the book well-nigh Pamela Joyner'south collection, "Four Generations: The Joyner/Giuffrida Collection of Abstruse Fine art" (2019). I hateful, that's such a groovy reference tool. Back when nosotros got started, it was Romare Bearden's book ["A History of African-American Artists: From 1792 to the Present," written with Harry Henderson and published in 1993], and then there was a book about the Harriet and Harmon Kelley collection ["The Harmon and Harriet Kelley Collection of African American Art," 1994]. The pages are all folded down on that book.

James Fuentes

Irving Sandler's book ["Art of the Postmodern Era: From the Late 1960s to the Early 1990s," 1996], a big kind of album, was a real resources for me when I was in higher and probably got me into this field. I'thou having a similar learning curve correct now simply trying to sympathise NFTs. Getting your bearings in contemporary art is going to be significantly easier than getting your bearings in cryptocurrency and NFTs.

Jessica Wessel

I go dorsum to the Marcel Duchamp biography by Calvin Tomkins ["Duchamp: A Biography," 1996]. One of the things that I pulled from that that actually stuck with me is that he believed in the aesthetic echo. The thought is that if I always had a kernel of an centre, I've always had it. He thought you were built-in with it, and that's my stance, likewise. People like to think you can teach it, but I don't think so.

Heather Flow

Go to Gimmicky Art Daily and Fine art Viewer [both websites that post pictures from current art shows effectually the world] and screenshot annihilation you like. Only create a file for yourself and so yous can start to see things you similar and salvage them. In that location'south this volume by Michael Findlay, "Seeing Slowly: Looking at Modern Art" (2017), and it explains how to wait at something that'southward not illustrative per se. Join a museum group considering you get a kind of automatic entry into the world. You have someone who'southward going to take you on tours, and you have a group of friends who you tin see things with.

Bridget Finn

Something that you lot may be immediately thrilled by upon first viewing may not be something y'all want to live with forever. Doing your research, in any mode is easiest for you, is a cracking place to start. A lot of that is social media these days because people only aren't able to go to places in person. You lot also sometimes get unique access to an artist's practice, right? Yous can't always visit an artist's studio — when you can, do — but seeing the inner workings of those things through Instagram or Facebook or whatsoever is still kind of a unique insight. What's difficult in the earth of social media is that there are simply so many things thrown to you lot at once, and then how exercise you filter all of that? That is something nosotros're all the same learning. Here, at that place's something called Detroit Fine Arts Breakfast Lodge, which has been going on for years. In the outset, it was a group of artists that met at a local Coney Island [basically what people in southeastern Michigan phone call a diner]; now you can access the group through Facebook. Artists share their work all day long, and so many people bring things they made together to share with each other.

Alexis Johnson

The volume can be overwhelming. Thankfully, notions of ane city, medium, race or gender holding dominion are fading, opening a multiplicity of ideas, but also creating a daunting number of paths for a start-time art buyer. The canon's expansion is long overdue — information technology just demands more intentionality.

Brian Donnelly

I mean, the great affair about art is once it's made, information technology sits in the ecosystem and it doesn't thing if information technology'due south young or old, information technology's just an object. You lot but gotta look.

4. Ask Questions and Plant Contacts

Gerrit van Honthorst, "The Tooth Puller" (1627), oil on canvas, Musée du Louvre, Paris © RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resources, NY. Photo: Stéphane Maréchalle

Eleanor Cayre

People in the art globe love to talk.

Heather Flow

If you actually really like an artist and want to buy a work, but nag the gallery as much equally possible. Follow up and don't stop, because they will somewhen call back yous and aid you notice something.

Maggie Kayne

Information technology could be easy to surrender on somebody fronting like, you know, "I've got this big fancy house and I'thou gonna buy fine art eventually," but they but want to ask you questions for ii years and they don't buy anything from you. I'1000 not an fine art adviser — I have a shop. If yous need your paw held in that way, then you should probably talk to an art adviser, and there are some great ones. There are some bad ones, as well.

Bridget Finn

I like people who tend to be very open: "This is what I think I like, this is what I don't know, this is where I'1000 starting." And so, I beloved it when people actually go involved, when they really practice their research, when they actually develop a connection with an artist'southward practice and are out there advocating for the work as well.

Jessica Wessel

The more I started practicing police, I realized that it merely wasn't for me. Information technology didn't burn down me up. I didn't want to read Hedge Fund Today. So what I first started to practise was, I would just go to art openings. I would go subsequently work. But, y'all know, I was a loser. I'1000 in a black conform, I'yard in the corner. Simply that was actually, at that point, just learning. Developing my heart, seeing things. Existence like, "Oh, I'm seeing a lot of that." And simply learning pricing. I was bold. I would but ask for anything. I accept that wheeling and dealing business groundwork — the boys that I went to business school with wouldn't hesitate to walk in anywhere and ask what something costs.

Ebony L. Haynes

I teach at Yale School of Art, and I teach another students for free. Everybody's oft surprised that you can ask for prices anywhere. In that location's some legal requirement to have the prices available for annihilation that's on display. [New York City'due south "Truth in Pricing Law," which requires all retail establishments to postal service prices of their trade in obviously view.] I call back the bigger upshot is people feeling non welcome to ask, or not understanding the art world in general. Just maybe with the advent of online platforms, they feel more than comfortable or understand that the price isn't meant to be a complete undercover to everyone. I had an assignment for the Yale students to find an artist or a show that you like and call to become the prices. Because nosotros're talking most pricing their own work. And they didn't know yous could even do that.

Jessica Wessel

Make friends with people and learn nigh what they're seeing. I'1000 constantly asking, "What have you seen lately that yous like?" Or "what do you lot think of this person'due south work?" And at present I'm snobby plenty that when people say, "Oh, have you heard of this artist?" My offset pace is to go on Instagram, and if none of my artist friends follow that person — no thanks. The artists know before we practise.

Valeria Napoleone

Many times, I've asked artists I trust, "Should I collect this artist? Should I touch it?" And they tell me, "No, no, no." Or they tell me, "Yep." These are the people I trust.

Lorenzo Atkinson

I love Derrick Adams's work, and I'chiliad never going to exist able to afford it, merely he posts a lot of artists on Instagram that he enjoys. So wait at artists that yous love and see who they love, considering they usually are the biggest supporters for younger artists and want to see them succeed as much as they have.

five. So Yous've Been Put On the Waiting List

Pieter Bruegel the Elderberry, "Two Chained Monkeys" (1562), oil on oak console, Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen, Berlin. bpk-Bildagentur/Art Resource, NY. Photo: Jörg P. Anders

Lorenzo Atkinson

A lot of galleries, I would electronic mail them, email them and no response. It'southward just similar, "I'chiliad willing to pay you lot money, why won't yous just sell me the art?" And and so I would merely reach out to the artist and be like, "Hey, I'thou trying to get in touch with your gallerist." And they would be like, "Oh, that'southward then crazy," and they would [email the gallery and] CC me. And the gallery would exist like, "Oh, I'm then sorry, I didn't come across this." Crazy. Like, "How practice I go a collector, a valuable collector, if you don't respond to me and sell me work?" But it's the proper noun of the game. They want their artists sold to the best collector — only that same artist might call up I am the all-time collector. A lot of artists that I've reached out to, they're similar, "We're and then happy to run into this sold to a Black person because it would exist weird to run across this hanging in a white person's house." And a lot of galleries are startled that I reach out to the artist, only I'm like, "Information technology's the 21st century, there are emails on the website — it's non that hard." And they also want to get their work sold, so. …

Mary Rozell

In that location are plenty of galleries where one can walk in and buy whatever one wants, as long equally one has the means to do and so. Other galleries are not merely selling artworks but placing them in the right collections. That means that, for desirable works, a gallery will rank buyers according to who can further accelerate the artist's career. Some gallery exhibitions are reserved entirely for museums earlier they even open to the public; in other words, not bachelor at all to collectors. In the gimmicky market place, it is not uncommon for a collector to limited interest in a work and be told that this interest will be evaluated in the context of other offers — and ultimately exist offered another, less desirable work, if anything at all.

Ebony L. Haynes

Expect lists are often used when at that place'south high demand for someone. Information technology's not really necessarily about exclusivity, but giving people fourth dimension. You lot accept to just get through the process. Information technology'southward almost similar a first-come, commencement-serve lineup, and so you have fourth dimension to assess if y'all actually want it. If you pass, then we continue to the next person.

Heather Flow

I've explained to people who know more — how can I say this? — who take some income and kind of empathise what things cost, and the way certain things work. They tend to sympathise the same thing works for a Ferrari. The manner it works with a express-edition Ferrari is that you don't walk into the Ferrari dealership and say, "I want that Ferrari." Y'all say, "Hello, I'm your customer." And so they're like, "Do you already own a Ferrari?" If y'all're similar, "No," you lot're going to be put on a waiting list, and you literally accept to work your manner upward to getting the Ferrari. I even had a customer once who was like, "Let'southward merely offer them over retail." I'one thousand similar, "I don't mean to be rude. I know you're very wealthy, simply really, the affair is, there are people much wealthier than you, who could offer a meg dollars over retail." Then I said, "If you really want this work, let's go creative. The gallery has no liquid greenbacks. I'm guessing they'd love to make a catalog for this artist. If yous're willing to pay over for the artwork, why don't we offer to pay for the production of the catalog?" And that's what nosotros did. Nosotros got the work nosotros wanted, and so information technology helped the artist and the gallery, and everyone was happy in the end.

Maggie Kayne

There are ever artists that do have that type of need. If in that location'southward an artist that's like that who you lot're really into, you might desire to look at that gallery's program and see if y'all gravitate toward other things, and only if you do, then starting time supporting that gallery and developing that relationship. There are moments of trends and heat and, y'all know, they modify. If you play the long game, information technology volition come around eventually because it's non going to be trendy forever. And information technology'southward a good affair to sympathize that, if information technology'south five years afterward and you lot still beloved the work, then that'southward right.

6. Success!

Rembrandt, "Rembrandt and Saskia in the Parable of the Prodigal Son" (circa 1635), oil on canvas, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden, Germany. Erich Lessing/Fine art Resource, NY

James Fuentes

Galleries are open to payment plans, also, yous know. If it would assistance to make a sale to receive payments over a stretch of half dozen months, that's even so income coming in every month — so the practiced galleries are artistic and flexible almost coming together the clients where they need to be met.

Ashley Carr

If a work that the collector likes is available, they shouldn't be shy about asking for a discount, or fifty-fifty a payment program. Afterward all, the worst that can happen is that the gallery says no.

Jessica Wessel

I'd say in 2015 I started collecting more. It was at a lower level. This thing above me — that'due south made of thermostat wire. I got that in a bar in Jersey City that sold art called LITM. I used to live in Jersey City, and I would end at the bar on my way habitation to have a drink. And that was 300 bucks. And when I have artists over, they all gravitate to that. They really similar it. The guy who made it, his proper noun's Norman Kirby. He's a street creative person in Jersey City. You've never heard of him. But I was like, "Whoa, that's a really cool object."

James Fuentes

Last month nosotros had an O.V.R. by David Leggett, and his drawings outset at $600, and the prices were public on the O.V.R. And so we had a painting show in the concrete gallery by Izzy Barber, and her paintings start at $1,000. So, yeah, information technology only and then happens that recently nosotros had on offering work that was probably at the accented lowest price point in the New York market.

Suzanne Modica

We recently placed a piece of work on paper by Linda Stark with a longtime client of ours. Stark is an established artist who has shown at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Moving-picture show Archive, and was included in the Hammer Museum's 2018 edition of "Made in L.A." Her paintings are above the $10,000 range, but her works on paper are at a much more attainable price point.

Jessica Wessel

I bought an Alina Perez for $1,200, and Max Marshall at Deli Gallery allow me pay in iv installments. I left corporate law to go into art, so my pay went downwards, merely I nevertheless get a salary, and so it just makes it like, "OK, if it's going to exist $300 and some a calendar month, that'due south not going to break me."

Monique Meloche

Contemporary art has get and so much more attainable in a broader landscape, correct? It'southward there. Information technology's on "Empire," it's in the movies, it's a much more than important affair just in pop culture. So it'southward more at people'due south fingertips than people recollect, and they should have a footling more confidence in their opinions. It's not, "What should I buy?" It'due south more like, "Can you assist guide me?"

Jessica Wessel

You lot take to be sincere if you lot're making inquiries and you lot're asking well-nigh someone'south work, or y'all're thinking about acquiring it. This is someone's life's work. This might be $i,000 to yous, but this is someone's soul. Then don't be like, "Oh, hey, I'm interested in that piece," and then disappear. You may non think of it like this, just information technology'south someone's livelihood and their business, and then treat it respectfully.

Digital product and pattern by Nancy Coleman, Esin Goknar, Jacky Myint, Caroline Newton and Daniel Wagner.

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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/06/14/t-magazine/how-to-buy-art.html

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