I recently sold works from the belle époque era to raise some cash through the bear market and, aside from usual haggling, the high end gallery curators were scared that there was no interest in this era anymore, that all the collectors were 80 years old
I told them that millenials and gen Z loooove art nouveau, theyre just not in your networks and dont have the money yet
this was hard for them to understand, as they are also 70 and 80 years old and this aspect of the art world, social media virality with no associated indexing on google, has only recently occurred
I would definitely say following the money has some folly because it doesnt really tap into all sentiment. money is influenced by crowd sentiment and if you inspire the crowd, the moneyed interests FOMO
How/Where did you sell them? I am one of the millennials you mentioned and would love to know where I can keep an eye out for this stuff once I can afford it.
There are only a few fine art galleries, and there are even fewer cities that are fine art markets.
I sold the belle epoque art nouveau works on park ave in nyc, but I originally found them in san francisco - which is not really a fine art market but has a couple galleries
In my experience, things like Art Nouveau and Art Deco are much more common in Europe, especially Belgium, France, Germany, and the UK. The places where this stuff was born can still be visited.
In Brussels, there are antique dealers in the Marolle area that specialize in this stuff, and they're happy to help out a prospective buyer.
I’ve seen ‘galleries’ all over. How does one know if it’s really a fine art gallery or not? I have a pretty good eye as I’m a novice painter with a few years of old-style academic training under my belt (casts, nude models, etc). All I know of that I’d call mostly respectable are Maxwell-Alexander and Arcadia Contemporary. But they deal only in living painters.
Honestly it’s about what other galleries think of them
The key term here is provenance, how strong and reliable is proving the history of ownership if that gallery is involved, can they produce the prior provenance on demand
I don’t know the best way to find that out from the outside. If you try to sell a piece you own you’ll find it very quickly, after you mention where you got it from
I bought fine art from a gallery a few years ago, and sold it to a different gallery when I needed money
This involved phone calls to galleries in rich areas, and predicting what people care about. Setting up the meetings was not complicated, I just had to do it, which was an adventure.
The primary thing to understand is the economics first, aesthetics second or not at all. When you are a private collector, you’re a wildcard that can influence the galleries whole inventory of that era/artist/series, because art is just low float asset, where a tiny tiny percent trades and changes the price of 100% of the series not trading, based on the last price of the 1 that did trade.
so you have to think about the gallery that would care to know you’re about to crash their inventory value. theyll want to get your piece out of circulation as fast as possible, to ensure no public price history occurs.
It's also a trade in (often) one-off pieces. It's their job and skill. The gallery is in business because the staff has a feel for how much money they can get from whom for these pieces. They do have a network of potential buyers (who are or are not currently interested in your one or two pieces). They also know the people at other galleries, who have still more contacts. These contacts are not just collectors - they are all the consultants and curators who work for them.
Some pieces are bought by the gallery because it "specializes" in that artist or genre. They know what they paid and got for other pieces. Perhaps nobody else does.
And then a piece is sometimes sold not just "because it's the price" but because it has sat long enough and it's time to go.
In contrast, I just went to New Haven CT for the pizza, and stumbled into the Yale art gallery. I didn't expect much but 3rd floor, Modern and Contemporary Art and Design was expertly curated.
The article has fun roasting this specific exhibition but as usual the various entities are independent and follow their own agenda and are all satisfied. No deep plot needed.
The museum loves to get along with rich private collections (which will donate money and art and will lend rare pieces on demand) and as a mission wants to host popular exhibitions. The directors score big in their network and get closer to rich collectors and add this feat to their resume. The public gets rarely seen pieces (for a steep fee in this case.) The museum will at least break even on the cost of running the thing. Insurance was needed and that's expensive and the government pitched in. The owners of the art fulfill their public-good objective AND increase the value all these pieces - now still better known. Scholarship got the short end of the stick - nobody on this crew depended on that too much. Everyone else is happy enough.
The question, rather buried, is that the show uses a scarce resource: six months of exhibition space at a major museum. Was this really the best the museum could do for the public in that time? On balance, because of so many major works, perhaps it was! But either actual curators couldn't be convinced (they would have little say as to which art), or the directors felt they could add a round of curation to their resume and didn't need to share credit. They might have had good success asking various art critics to write something to hang in each room (for the prestige or for money).
There is no doubt that the show is still useful to the public. Some private collections hold many big name art pieces and do not (yet) have a space of their own to display them. If you care greatly about one of these artists - or that period - you will pay to visit. This will be your only chance to ever see some works. If you care about art in general, you will be sorely tempted - for that single reason. You have heard of all these works and you finally get a chance to see a pile of them. In both cases, let's be clear: curation is NOT relevant. Quantity is sufficient (quantity of these well known pieces).
If you care about well-known art, when you are in Los Angeles, you visit the Broad. You have to score a time slot (it's free) but this private collection "has everything". It stands out: a private collection of mostly big-shot art that has a permanent exhibition space of its own (an extravagant half city block in the middle of downtown.)
There's an outdoor park in the region with what was a well-loved area — a common place to get married, beautiful views.
Several years ago there was a major donation and suddenly this area — prime park topography — was filled haphazardly with modern sculptures. The aesthetics of the place were totally destroyed, and obviously because of this donor. It wasn't even so much that the sculptures are ugly, it's that putting them there in particular was completely nonsensical. It would be sort of like if someone donated billions of dollars to the NPS in the US and then they just filled the national mall with contemporary abstract outdoor sculptures.
The exhibit that's the focus of this article will pass and you're right that in the grand scheme of things it's probably inconsequential. Museums show private collections all the time. But to me the underlying concerns were very important and relevant — the exhibit seemed to be incoherent, the real reason for the exhibit is kind of buried, basically a poor exhibit is happening because of money and there's an attempt to conceal it so as to not anger the donor. There are certain situations where all of that becomes more consequential or long lasting, as in permanent outdoor sculpture exhibits, or if the exhibit also has some controversial outcome.
I hear you. I was trying to counter the all too common "because of money".
Art lovers should be happy that this London exhibition happens. Many will pay to see it. Because it presents a pile of significant works rarely seen otherwise. [That art gained high value because at least the artists have been celebrated by critics and collectors. Not only because of art circuit shenanigans. Some of that but not only.]
For your sculpture donation: Was the issue the donation? Or the money that allowed amassing this collection? Or was the city clueless about what to do with it? Or corruption: Was this park chosen because that donor has connections and insisted on it or because a greedy city hopes this prime location will bring more donations?
There's only so far that "just the money" goes.
In the San Francisco Bay Area, the SFMOMA museum was turned from 3rd rate to world class by one massive art donation from one wealthy donor. On Stanford campus there are two instances of massive donations from wealthy donors: the Rodin sculpture collection and the Anderson Collection (and its dedicated building). They take a lot of space - and very skillfully done I think - and art lovers can't really complain about the money itself.
Yeah I'm not opposed to exhibits of private collections. Sometimes it's a good opportunity to see lesser-known works, and I don't have a problem with "here's a random selection of artworks collected by someone". But I wish they would just be up front about it.
I think I'm just sensitive because of this dynamic in this park I mentioned.
I think what happened is this donor donated a lot of money, had a collection of outdoor sculptures, and wanted them placed in this prime area of the park for narcissistic reasons or something, and the park administration felt that the donation was too large to turn down the strings attached of the sculptures.
I love modern art, so it's not the sculptures themselves that bother me, and I don't mind the donation, it's that I think the landscape is key and they would have been better located dispersed throughout the park. Sometimes negative space on a landscape is as important as "stuff" on it.
>There are gains to be had from exhibiting private artwork in an internationally renowned institution; inclusion within a curated major exhibition lends it credibility and legitimacy, which can be added to an impressive provenance trail, making it attractive when put up for sale.
We gain putting things that are "hidden gems" and telling people it's good, for prestige, and/or leading up to sales. Art collectors that care about money aren't usually art appreciators. It's just a slow version of bored apes.
Friedrich Nietzsche — 'We have art in order not to die of the truth.'
When an artist captures a qualia in a medium we experience an alternative truth, more potent than death. Qualia are hints at the existence of eternity. An art exhibition has the potential to be a part of a peak experience in someone's life. We currently speak so much about the rights of artists that it seems we are neglecting these important duties, as keepers of the gate.
> Only one room out of seven, containing a single example, fulfills the exhibition’s conceit (or the first sentence, anyway). Jeff Wall’s “A Sudden Gust of Wind (After Hokusai)”
You can get a sudden gust of wind after hakusai, too!
I told them that millenials and gen Z loooove art nouveau, theyre just not in your networks and dont have the money yet
this was hard for them to understand, as they are also 70 and 80 years old and this aspect of the art world, social media virality with no associated indexing on google, has only recently occurred
I would definitely say following the money has some folly because it doesnt really tap into all sentiment. money is influenced by crowd sentiment and if you inspire the crowd, the moneyed interests FOMO