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Collecting Art in times of Disaster: is it ethical?

Sat, 23 Sep 2023 17:19:50 GMT

Let's address the Elephant in the Room (booth S13, Gallery X, ArtFair 1001): How do you feel about buying an artwork that is several tens of thousands or more worth, in the wake of a natural and humanitarian disaster somewhere else?

Lazy Abstract :

When disasters devastate whole regions and populations, like the historic earthquake hitting Central Morocco two weeks ago, one can feel awkward, inappropriate or even unethical when wandering through art fairs in a safe place, discussing ridiculous prices with clients or listening to some privileged collectors talk in front of an abstract artwork. In this case, the art world can seem so far from the reality of the majority of people. This is when I developed what I call my professional “conch-reflexe”, to disappear and take a step back from an industry that takes itself far too seriously considering real tragedies are actually impacting people’s lives. But still, we need Beauty in times of horror, and there is a way out from that moment of unethicality: it is when you decide to act. Many actors of the art industry, whether artists, curators, online art platforms, galleries or fairs, have tried to act during times of disasters, crisis or even war. In the case of Morocco today, you can make a difference now by supporting an artist-led initiative, Artists for Morocco, which sells photographic prints to support humanitarian NGO’s in the field, and become a socially conscious and mindful Collector through very affordable and meaningful art.

PPPs versus Disaster

Less than two weeks ago, I flew back home after one month of European “Relocation with less benefits” (another term for “vacation” frequently used by parents traveling with children). After a 10 hour flight without sleep, I dropped off my family in Miami, and was fiercely looking forward to my next solo-work-trip to New York the next morning, to get some sleep on the plane, work efficiently and fit in some deserved me-time (another scarcity for toddler-mothers). Sighing in the NYC cab while stuck in the traffic, I repeated to myself “PPP”, to relax. Privileged People’s Problems. I did not realize yet how true that was at this moment.

In fact, my flight back home happened on Friday, September 8, 2023. For many colleagues in the art industry, this date resonated with the New York fall art week and The Armory Show’s public opening. For many other PP (Privileged People), this date overlapped with Fashion Week and the last few games of the US Open tennis in New York.

For nearly 3,000 other individuals somewhere else in the world, Friday, September 8, 2023, meant death. Over 300,000 people were impacted by a 6.8 magnitude earthquake hitting central Morocco, notably the High Atlas Mountains. More than 5,600 people were injured and hundreds of thousands are still in need of basic needs. The deadly disaster also severely damaged parts of Morocco’s cultural heritage, such as the Medieval UNESCO World Heritage site Medina, surrounded by sandstone walls.

Overcoming the conch-reflexe

When I heard about the earthquake, I had my usual disaster-conch-reflex: shocked by the amplitude of the catastrophe, I first feel paralyzed in my capacity to be truly helpful, then I get a feeling of inappropriateness about focusing or working in the arts (is it really appropriate or ethical to place an artwork during those times, or publish that art-post I prepared on Instagram the day after an earthquake?). So I crawl into my professional conch-shell, disappear from the artscene for a few days to take a step back and think about what to do.

N.B.: For those who are not familiar with conchs, they are a form of sea-snail living in tropical shallow waters in the Caribbean. I like to use the conch-metapher rather than that of an earth-snail or turtle sticking their heads in to protect themselves from danger, not only because of personal identification needs with my Caribbean heritage, but also to reference their habitat in a region regularly devastated by natural disasters such as hurricanes and floods. Home to the Bahamas, the Queen Conch can live up to 40 years, and beyond representing a tropical and touristic fantasy as Bahamian artist Blue Curry critically and accurately puts forward in his work (cf. conch installation in image below), I believe this sea animal is actually a symbol of survival of disasters. When you listen to the sound from an empty conch shell, you don't hear the ocean, you hear blood running through veins.

I sometimes wonder whether this professional-conch-reflexe is due to my previous career as a diplomat, when reactivity to a crisis was a matter of actual survival (and of political egos). Stepping foot in immediate post-war African countries, talking to child-soldiers and meeting with sexually abused girls in conflicts certainly was a heavier role than doing any activist artist studio visit - however politically active they can be. It certainly taught me a lot about PPPs and taking a step back from the seriousness of the artworld. I remember my first “crisis” as an art professional, when a museum manager, sweating stressfully, came to see me during our event saying: “We have an emergency.” Still affected by an ex-diplomat’s conflict-PTSD, I was expecting the worst - for a museum scenario. Did the collection burn? Did the artist break a leg? “The champagne has not arrived for the opening in 20 minutes”, he said. Sighing on my side, fortunately just a PPP. I couldn't care less, and replied we would enjoy a dry opening. Since then, I keep telling my clients that one key to keep enjoying the hustle of art fairs and exposed gravitas of art galleries is to not to take art itself too seriously, even if art can constitute the cultural heritage of a Nation. (Looking for humor in art does not only make things easier and more accessible, it also makes better art collections - more on this in an upcoming article, just subscribe to the link below ).

But let’s be clear: I do not regret the political or diplomatic sphere and I left for the exact same reasons I can feel today in the art industry: a feeling of helplessness when facing disaster.

Fortunately, there is a way out. I am glad it does not take me years like a conch to un-bury itself from the sand to reach the ocean; it only takes a few days of observation to leave my conch-shell before acting. Not being a Doctors-Without-Borders surgeon capable of saving lives in a conflict, we have to cope with our own reality and see what we can do within reach. Queen conchs’ average reach for survival and living often falls within an acre. So let’s each act within our own reach and our own capacities, whatever field we are in. In fact, after the conch-shell-reflexe, I start sorting out the mediatic flow on the disaster, do some research, call some friends or contacts close to the ground, or ex-colleagues working in the humanitarian field, and ask what can be done and what makes sense. While humanitarian workers dig under the rubbles to extract bodies, I dig into online options to try to help. It sounds terribly frustrating at first hand but relieving when someone tells you that it can actually make a difference.

And suddenly, you start perceiving the light at the end of your helplessness-tunnel, (not thinking of the light the survivors under the rubbles may see to breathe) and seeing again the possible connections between art and disaster relief, the existing bridges between collecting art and activism or humanitarian support. Because you are in a better position to help when you are not a victim.

How to make a difference through art in times of disaster

There are numerous examples of art being used in times of crisis or catastrophe, either as a healing tool to overcome mental, emotional or physical distress, as a means to raise awareness or show empathy with the victims of the disaster, or a way of expressing discontent on how the disaster is being handled, just to name a few perspectives. I have studied a few cases in an essay titled “Art and Politics facing Disaster in the Caribbean”, published in the collective book “ THE POWER OF THE STORY: Writing Disasters in Haiti and the Circum-Caribbean ” , edited by Vincent Joos, Martin Munro & John Ribó (Berghahn, 2023).

I happened to introduce this paper with an illustration of a painting of “Lwa Goudou”, a Haitian folkloric character known to be a strong terrifying creature living beneath the ground and causing the earth to tremble. The painting, created by Haitian artist Edouard Duval-Carrie , was commissioned in 2020 by the Winthrop-King-Institute of Florida State University to commemorate the Haitian earthquake of January 2010. The artwork was inaugurated in the context of a conference organized at the Institute on Disaster in the Caribbean. Maybe every earthquake has its own “Lwa Goudou” to justify the absurdity and injustice of hitting thousands of people without warning. Maybe Morocco has its own “Lwa Goudou” to accept the unacceptable.

Cédrick-Isham Calvados , a French-Caribbean photographer from Guadeloupe, spontaneously decided to publish on his Instagram account photographs from a recent visit to Morocco before the earthquake (see cover image), to share awareness about the tragedy and to share several links of organizations coordinating humanitarian relief for the victims. His very peaceful and poetic photographs are not only a striking contrast to the chaotic devastation of the High Atlas Mountains, but also echo his practice of always putting forward human dignity whatever their condition. An artistic act of solidarity without borders.

Shortly after the earthquake hit Central Morocco, 26 emerging and established Moroccan photographers and artists worldwide have launched a photographic print sale online, Artists For Morocco, whose proceeds are donated a 100% to two NGO’s: Amal Women’s Training Center, a Marrakesh-based women’s charity delivering food to victims in remote villages, and Rif Tribes Foundation, an artistic and humanitarian non-profit organization bringing aid and support to the affected areas. Among the artists contributing to the emergency sale are Yto Barrada, Hassan Hajjaj and Meriem Bennani, whose photographs are sold, like all other works on the sale, 134 $USD. Those who know the artists’ careers may realize the gap with their usual prices. And those who want to collect consciously, ethically or mindfully have a unique and affordable opportunity to act now, by supporting this Artists collective through a quick online purchase. I can only commend a new New-York based client, who accepted to kick off their collection by acquiring a photograph of Imane Djamil from this charitable sale.

Artists however are not the only ones to try to be more impactful for disaster relief. Institutions, too, can contribute to the collective effort and make collecting art more ethical and impactful during times of disaster.

The public reaction to the disaster by 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair was immediate, partly due to the founder, Touria El Glaoui ’s, own ties to the North African country, and because the fair has an edition in Marrakesh (next one in february 2024), in addition to London and New York. The fair initially announced a relief fund in partnership with other regional partners, such as the Museum of African Contemporary Art Al Maaden and the Montresso Art Foundation, and a collaboration with artists. However, the exact actions have not been communicated and the ties with Artists for Morocco are unclear for me at this stage.

Other than these two initiatives, little has been done in the art world to try to help the victims of the Moroccan earthquake, leaving it to the humanitarian organizations to complete their mission. No one can be blamed for this, as it requires a certain set of organization, logistics and verifications before creating a relief fund from scratch that actually benefits the affected population.

Various channels of ethical collecting do however exist in other areas:

Artsy , for instance, regularly organizes impact auctions to support certain populations or causes by donating part of their proceeds to non-profit partner organizations. Past examples of Artsy Impact Auctions include support to refugees from Ukraine in 2022, the fight against irresponsible gun legislation reform in the USA through a youth led organization in 2022, or the protection of LGBTQIA+ youth through the Ali Forney Center in 2023. The latest Artsy Impact Auction, selling an artwork by Miwa Komatsu , however was not dedicated to Moroccan relief but to another Natural Disaster Relief, related to wildfires and flood damage in South Korea. We certainly cannot stop all the wildfires at the same time and may need to choose our battles.

Another online art sales platform, Art for Change, offers art “for the socially conscious collectors”, by making a donation to the nonprofit of the artist’s choice, joining collecting and philanthropy. The company does not currently offer support to Morocco, but allows collectors to choose their cause.

Art Collecting as a Philanthropic Pursuit is also put forward by the Bessemer Trust to make collecting art more socially impactful.

(c) Nikita Kadan, from the series "Broken Pole", 2019–2021, Iron, print on silk, 150.5x112 cm (60x44 in), Voloshyn Gallery

Galleries can also position themselves to support artists in difficulty or through war times, such as Voloshyn Gallery , an underground gallery space in Kyiv, that converted into a bomb shelter as the war broke out, reverting hence to its original use during Soviet times. Its founders, Julia and Max Voloshyn, were “saved” by Covid as they could not return to their home country, Ukraine, after their participation at Untitled Art Fair in Miami in 2021. They avoided the war with Russia. Instead, they decided to organize a pop-up exhibition curated by Omar Lopez-Chahoud in Wynwood, Miami, to support some of the artists who could or would not leave Ukraine and experienced the destruction of their country. When I visited the show, and being myself a collector of affordable art, I immediately knew I wanted to support the gallery and decided to buy a small water painting by Maria Surylenko , making therefore an exception to my collector's statement of acquiring only Caribbean contemporary works (so as to focus on one narrative and stay within my restricted means). Otherwise, I would have loved to support also Nikita Kadan ’s photographic series and work with cement, which reveal how fragile human lives and constructions are everyday in his home country. Kadan, who is often collaborating in his works with architects, sociologists and human rights activists, is also a founding member of Hudrada (Artistic Committee), a curatorial and activist collective.

Kadan's work and the story of the gallery somehow make me thing of the historic role a curator played during World War II to avoid the bombings of artworks: French Resistance Fighter Rose Vallard, who studied at the Ecole du Louvre, and became an unpaid assistant curator at the Jeu de Paume in 1936. Looking naive and probably too French to speak fluently German, Rose was able to trick the Nazis and spy on the Rosenberg Special Task Force tasked to plunder artworks. The Jeu de Paume hid the “room of martyrs”where “degenerate art” was kept and destroyed in front of her eyes, including works by Miro, Klee, Picasso. But she was able to help save other possessions of many collectors and had a monument role in the recovery of 60,000 works of art by creating a treasure map of the pieces she was able to hide, to avoid the bombing.

More recently, many Curators have embarked on a socio-political or activist mission, including to raise awareness on how disasters impacted a population in certain contexts or how they were handled by political authorities. The powerful exhibition “ No Existe Un Mundo Poshuracán: Puerto Rican Art in the Wake of Hurricane Maria” , curated by Marcela Guerrero at the Whitney Museum last year, is for me one of the best recent contemporary art exhibition examples on the theme of disaster. The exhibition looked at the human loss, the collective trauma, the fractured infrastructure and ecological devastation, but also the beauty and poetry created in a disastrous political and sanitary environment. In this exhibition, Yiyo Tirado Rivera ’s sandcastle “La Concha”, named after a hotel in San Juan, is yet another symbol of the fragility of coastlines and constructions not only in the Caribbean but in the Global South, swallowed by erosion, sea level rise, hurricanes and earthquakes, just like Medina’s sand walls in Morocco.

YOU can become a Mindful Art Patron

From World War II to the recent earthquake in Morocco, we may have drifted in the nature of the disaster. But actually, not so much, as all disasters end up being political, and my three main conclusions remain the same:

1) In the end, even “natural” disasters are provoked or accentuated by Humans (through pollution and climate change, through weak development of basic infrastructures and buildings etc.) and therefore not as far from man-made catastrophes and wars (more on this subject in my essay mentioned above “Art and Politics facing Disaster in the Caribbean” );

2) Therefore, everyone can take responsibility and play a role in either trying to diminish the contribution to such disasters, or at least help in the aftermath of the catastrophe, whatever your scale, wherever you are. You don’t need to be a Moroccan conch to act in Morocco.

3) And finally, YOU can decide to make a difference as an Art Patron, by collecting responsibly, ethically and mindfully. Art History and art communities will thank and remember you for this. Have a look today at the Artists for Morocco sales, or support other artists communities in need.

Our World is on Fire, Don’t Look Away. We are One People.

(c) Nari Ward, "We The People" (Arabic version), 2019, shoelaces, 60x213,5 inches, Courtesy: the artist and Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York, London, Palm Beach, Hong Kong, Seoul

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If you are an art lover but never dared to acquire an artwork except some artifacts from your last vacation, because pricing and the cold gallery world intimidated you, we can help you deconstruct those barriers to access the art market with more confidence and within your means. Book a free consultation today to learn about your art profile.
If you are lucky enough to own an art collection , but feel that maybe you haven’t paid enough attention in the past to certain communities or causes, and your collection might be a bit “vanilla” or lack a structured and mindful purpose, be assured that it is not too late to make a difference. Book a free consultation today to assess your collection.
If you are an artist in quest for a more impactful international career, book an empowering consultation here.
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Our Story is Your Story

TOUKAN Collector’s blog is a newly launched blog by Vanessa Selk, Founder of TOUKAN-ARTHOUSE, for socially conscious and mindful collectors and art aficionados who want to learn more about navigating the art world more mindfully.

TOUKAN-ARTHOUSE is an alternative art advisory & art programming platform that aims at diversifying art collections at both ends of the spectrum: within collections, by encouraging acquisitions of artists of underrepresented communities such as Caribbean, LatinX, Afro-descendant or Indigenous communities; and on the collector’s side, by making art more accessible to all profiles and backgrounds and diversifying the collector base.

Vanessa Selk is a French Guyanese-German Political Art Advisor focusing on underrepresented cultural communities. She is a former Diplomat working for the French government on African conflict situations in Paris, and on Human Rights, Cultural Rights and Indigenous Peoples' rights at the United Nations in New York. She then became the Head of the Cultural Office for Florida and the Caribbean of the French Embassy in Miami (today Villa Albertine), where she developed a Caribbean contemporary art program through exhibitions, performances, theater, film and music. As an independent cultural practitioner, she founded the TOUT-MONDE Art FOUNDATION in 2019, a public charity dedicated to support Caribbean artists, before launching TOUKAN-ARTHOUSE.

How to start a collection 1/2

websitebuilder@1and1.de — Fri, 28 Apr 2023 00:07:38 GMT

Tips to kick off a meaningful collection that reflects your personality.

SPOILER ALERT : If you are NOT a first-time or emerging collector, this might not be the right article for you. The strategies we advise for first time collectors and confirmed collectors are quite different. A second article will be published for confirmed collectors soon.

If, on the contrary, you have always enjoyed art, or been intrigued by it, and wondered what it would be like to have some art in your home or office, but often felt overwhelmed by the art market and were therefore never convinced enough to acquire art yourself, then you are at the right spot: "There is so much art I like, I don't know where to start!", "What if I overpay for the artwork I chose?", "How am I sure this is the right fit?", "I like this artwork in that gallery, but I don't know how to approach them", "I want to start a collection but how do I start?" If this sounds familiar, keep reading.

The most common advices you will hear or read when starting an art collection are: "Collect what you love" or "Start defining your style or taste". These are technically not bad advices, but they do have some strong limitations:

First, when you start collecting art, you might not be fully aware of what your taste is. You might walk through an art fair saying "I love this" versus "I don't like this", but after a few hours of touring, you might have loved a bit too many artworks for your wallet. So what then? Love is not enough in the art market, plus, it can lead to quite boring picks according to collector Erlin Kagge...
Second, defining a style takes time . If you are not used to seeing a lot of art, it might be challenging to say right away what all your "likes" have in common. You need to go to exhibitions, attend gallery openings, museums, art fairs etc. and you have to read a lot if you want to better understand why you like certain artworks and why some might be worth your consideration and others not. Educating yourself in art is an infinite mission: we educate ourselves until we die.
Third, and you might limit yourself once you define your taste : Once you have identified your style, and may even be able to qualify it (ex.: abstract landscapes), you might be so excited that your attention will focus only on this style. You will be more inclined to buy an artwork just because it is your style and in your price range rather than consider all other factors (artist's statement and career, real market value, investment potential, context, impact...). You might not see with a same eye other artworks and therefore miss some great opportunities. You may end up being stuck in your own style. For instance, if you realized that you like abstract landscapes, you might be tempted to buy several in a row…which might end up being pretty boring.
Fourth, style and taste evolve with time : Trust that your eye and taste will become sharper and edgier with time. What you love today might not provoke the same emotions in you in five or ten years. So don't become too bulimic with your abstract landscapes, you may want to give them away one day...

Of course, we can help you navigate all these challenges : defining your style today, developing your art education, trying to anticipate your next moves, helping you to evolve and grow your collection with time to avoid boring or repetitive schemes. Feel free to reach out to us for help on this!

Meanwhile, here is another trick to help you pick the right artworks among the very overwhelming amount of works on the market: Instead of asking yourself “what’s my style or taste?”, ask yourself “What’s my Story?" Asking yourself what you want to tell those who will see the artwork (family, friends, colleagues, other collectors, artists...) or what you want to be reminded of everyday is a much more powerful and interesting way to build a collection that is coherent and unique but diversified at the same time. We will help you write Your (his)Story. Here are a couple of questions to start with:

Background : Where did I grow up? What was my childhood like? What reminds me of my childhood?
Community : Who is my family? Who is my community? Who are my friends and why? Where do I belong to?
Education : What reminds me of school or college? What language(s) do I speak?
Work: What is my professional environment? What are my professional motivations or goals?
Personal development : What are my challenges? How do I see the past/present/future?
Global interests & concerns : What do I care about? What worries me? What message do I want to share with the world?

These questions can sound conceptual at the beginning and hard to relate to any artwork. But we can help you identify the right artworks to tell Your Story. For instance, if you a LatinX Millennial who grew up between his Latin home city and the Bronx, working in tech today and worried about robot ethics and consumerism, we could lead you to see works by Andrew Roberts or Jacky Connolly , for example. Roberts is a young artist born in Mexico, who likes to use video art to denounce big tech or industrial companies and brands that step on individual freedoms. Connolly is a young artist from New York who uses different forms of technology, including AI images and "deep fake' to question our sense of reality and surroundings.

(c) Jacky Connolly, Descent into Hell , 2021, Still from Four-channel high-definition video, color, sound, 33-57min, Whitney Museum, New York.

Once you have identified some answers to your main question "What is My Story?", you can transform them into concrete steps to buy works that will constitute your first collector base, at a budget and size you are comfortable with:

Start with something you care about : whether it is a specific existing or fictive person, whether cats, environment or community, start noticing what makes you feel alive;
Start with something familiar or makes you feel good, maybe that reminds you of your childhood, a good memory, vacation or person;
Chose a format that speaks to you : painting, sculpture, photography (note that photographs, prints and drawings are usually more affordable than paintings and sculptures if you are on a budget);
It's ok to start small: first purchases might not be the best. You can have buyer’s remorse months or years later, in particular as your taste will evolve. This is why it’s good to keep those firsties small. But if you don’t like them, don’t hate them. It is great to look back to some first pieces and smile at them, acknowledging: “Well, these were not my best picks”, this is how you know you are getting better and are on the right path! Don’t give up and continue exploring new horizons.

A French-Senegalese New York-based collector has been hesitating for years about acquiring a contemporary art piece, after years of collecting traditional aquarelle portraits or postwar acrylic paintings form Senegal, such as by Souleymane Keita . She discovered Mirtho Linguet, a French-Guianese photographer, through his photographies " Mental Cide" in 2018 and immediately fell in love with it (see image below). It deeply resonated with her own story and journey emigrating from Senegal to France, and suffering from a handicap ever since she was a child. Even if Linguet's work moved her deeply, she still wasn't able to make the step towards a contemporary art piece. She had to wait an important birthday celebration for her closed ones to decide to acquire one for her. Once she artwork was delivered at her home, she realized there was no doubts about it fitting perfectly within her home and with the other more traditional pieces, as it was reflecting her very own story.

In other words, whatever your taste, remember that you are unique: your choices reflect your personal background, identity, experiences and thoughts, even the darkest ones. So if you are true to yourself, your collection will be unique as well. It will reflect Your unique Story.

Once you have acquired one or more smaller pieces that you are comfortable with, and which constitute a first a collectors “base”, you will progressively start moving out of your comfort zone, exploring new formats, new subjects, new perspectives that even make you uncomfortable. This is when collections really get exciting: they reflect the collector’s doubts, fears, grey zones. But more on this in another upcoming article, dedicated to confirmed collectors - subscribe here.

Meanwhile, get in touch with us to start writing Your Story!

What kind Art Collector are you? Get a personalized analysis by participating in our Collector's Quiz here.

The Benefits of Collecting Art

Sun, 26 Feb 2023 05:33:43 GMT

Three reasons why everyone should acquire art

There are way too many benefits related to art, which have been widely studied, shared and written about. I will for my part focus on three main reasons everyone should purchase or own art (if you have not already done so) and consider doing it through our conscious and mindful approach.

1. Art promotes Health and Mindfulness

There is scientific evidence (from biological, cognitive and neurological science) that visual arts promote health and wellness. Whether passively just by being surrounded by it, or actively by studying a piece of art or creating it, arts engage our mind in stimulating ways and tap into our emotions to make us feel good. In fact, displaying art in your home and office can reduce stress hormones (cortisol) and encourage positive hormones (endorphins and dopamine). By accessing and engaging different parts of the brain, arts create conditions for mindfulness through conscious shifting of mental states. Art can therefore be used to create a unique cognitive change leading to a new state of mind called “flow”, which is a state of optimal engagement that generates feelings of pleasure and reward. This is why arts, used as an effective tool for mindfulness, have been a widely used practice in schools and in mental health institutions. French gallerist Leila Mordoch indirectly pointed out these benefits in a 2009 publication titled “Is Art an Antidepressant?”.

Now imagine being immerged in your home or office by all these art pieces acting as mindful and antidepressant brain stimulations: wouldn’t it feel like Alice in Artland, falling in a huge cup of happiness unleashing your creativity?

2. Art is a risk-averse investment

Investing in art is a great way to diversify your portfolio, add value to your real estate and reduce risks level of your financial assets. With a low correlation to stocks, art is a historically performing asset that brings more stability in times of uncertainty and financial crisis. Art can appreciate in value over time, and depending on the type of artwork you choose, it can give you a unique asset with distinctive, intangible value. Art can also be viewed as a form of currency, as it has utility and is transferable. As an artist’s popularity grows, so will their work’s value, resulting in a potential return on investment. Finally, owning an artwork you enjoy can bring you a greater sense of satisfaction than merely investing in stocks and bonds. Investing in art allows you to combine design and wellness with security against inflation and hedges against currency devaluation.

And guess what: investing in art is not exclusive to millionaires who have the knowledge about and the access to the art market. Investing in art is accessible to all. Many famous collectors, like Dorothy and Herbert Vogel in the 1960s, started with very little means, as highlights another contemporary collector Erling Kagge in his book “A Poor Collector’s Guide to Buying Great Art”. So, what if the next famous collector of this 2020s were you?

3. You can write History by becoming an Art Patron

History is remembered by the culture and art a society has produced and bequeathed to future generations. We remember Antique Greece through the writings and statues that were left behind. In the same way, acquiring art is a way to preserve the culture of a community and prepare its legacy. Buy building a collection of contemporary art, you not only contribute to writing the visual history of that community, but you also support a community of artists in the present, who will often appreciate the patronage. Your relationship to the artists may grow over the years, and your social network will expand. It will open new horizons, both professionally and personally. Other artists, collectors and art professionals will hear about your collection and your name may be remembered as someone who generously supported a certain artists community and who contributed to their growth.

So, ready to see your name printed in future art history books? ;)

If one or all of the benefits above resonate with you, let's connect and discuss Art that Empowers You.

Note for fun: To test the art knowledge of an AI, one of the paragraphs above was partly written with the contribution of the AI Chatgpt. Guess which part?

ABOUT YOU

Tell us who you are

If you are an art lover but never dared to acquire an artwork except some artifacts from your last vacation, because pricing and the cold gallery world intimidated you, we can help you deconstruct those barriers to access the art market with more confidence and within your means. Book a free consultation today to learn about your art profile.
If you are lucky enough to own an art collection , but feel that maybe you haven’t paid enough attention in the past to certain communities or causes, and your collection might be a bit “vanilla” or lack a structured and mindful purpose, be assured that it is not too late to make a difference. Book a free consultation today to assess your collection.
If you are an artist in quest for a more impactful international career, book an empowering consultation here.
If you are an interior design/architect professional in search for the meaningful missing art piece to enhance your thoughtful design, let's discuss our collaboration here.

ABOUT US

Our Story is Your Story