While a “mature” market may be “fair” and present an even playing field for all market participants, the art market remains “exclusive,” with access controlled by market participants.
Five panelists who met during Art Basel to discuss the art market turned their attention to a number of topics, including market-defined hierarchies and market-controlled access.
- Lindsay Pollock, former editor-in-chief of Art in America;
- Olav Velthuis, sociology professor at University of Amsterdam;
- Adam Sheffer, partner at Cheim & Read, and president of the Art Dealers Association of America;
- Pierre Valentin, partner at law firm Constantine Cannon LLP in London;
- Bob Rennie, executive directory & founder, Rennie Group (real estate development, marketing, sales), and Vancouver-based collector.
- András Szántó, author and cultural consultant, moderated the discussion.
I quote from the article that appeared in Artsy as the words are fun, worth reading in the original, and insightful:
Rennie, the veteran collector, described visiting Mary Boone’s gallery [Mary Boone Gallery] in the early 1990s, dressed in a ripped ski jacket, and asking two young men standing behind a desk and a woman sitting behind a typewriter whether Mary was in. Both men said no. As Rennie began to explain who he was and why he was visiting, the woman behind the typewriter jumped up, extended a hand and said, “Hi Bob, I’m Mary Boone.” That kind of selective attention, he said, happens routinely in the art world.
Further along in his collecting career, in 1999, Rennie said, things changed “very clearly” for him and his wife, after they acquired Mike Kelley’s John Glenn Memorial Detroit River Reclamation Project (Including The Local Culture Pictorial Guide, 1968-1972, Wayne/Westland Eagle).
“I found that when I mentioned that, I got into the club,” he said. “We all of a sudden got access to works that other collectors couldn’t be the custodians of.” He challenged anyone listening to “try and get a Mark Bradford.” You can’t, he said, unless you have a relationship with museums or an existing collection deemed strong or important enough to merit the opportunity to buy one of his works.
Observed Olav Velthuis of the University of Amsterdam,
“It is that part of the market that makes it attractive to people, the whole spiel about the waiting lists, and about getting access and not getting access.”
The art market presents a “a status mechanism,” an indicator of where people “are in this global cultural elite.”
See:
“The Art Market Has Changed Dramatically – But Is It a Mature Industry?” | Anna Louie Sussman, Artsy, 8 July 2017
#art #artmarket #realestate #collecting #collections #ArtBasel #luxury #smartluxury