The art world is the ultimate choose-your-own adventure. But for scores of prospective art buyers, it can be difficult to know where to start.
Between charting the contemporary art world, learning the protocols for purchasing, and connecting with key players, starting one’s art buying journey can prove quite an intimidating endeavor.
But few things are as rewarding as owning art. Artsy asked ten rising art collectors aged 35 and under from around the globe what advice they’d give a friend interested in buying art. Traditional notions that art collections must be academic and encyclopedic are falling by the wayside: Each of the rising collectors featured here espoused some version of ‘buy from the heart.’
Their stories, however, contained deeper, more varied insights about the many paths available to budding art lovers.
Jack Siebert
Founder, JACK SIEBERT PROJECTS, Los Angeles
Jack Siebert had the world at his fingertips, and chose art—after attending his first Art Basel Miami Beach in 2015.
Abstractions by Cecily Brown and Mary Weatherford struck Siebert and his mother from the walls of Miami’s pioneering Rubell Museum that week. Siebert, ignited, changed his major to art history, helped his mom start collecting female artists, and began his own “more instinctual” collection of punchy young painters like Emma McIntyre. In 2023, Siebert started curating pop-up shows in art capitals like New York and Paris. “They inform each other, in both directions,” he observed of his two complementary roles.
Siebert advises new art buyers to start building their network by meeting artists and galleries. “I think relationships are the most meaningful way to navigate the art world,” he said.
“When a gallery doesn’t know you, there's no level of trust there,” Siebert noted. “Building a relationship is step one, but it’s not always the easiest.” Lack of connections can present a barrier to entry. That’s why there are small art fairs—like Siebert’s favorite, NADA—where galleries “are way more open to meeting new people than someone stepping into their intimidating white box in Chelsea.”
Sandile Xayiya
Business executive, Johannesburg
Sandile Xayiya’s parents started collecting African art after joining the fight against apartheid, and the incipient aficionado grew up surrounded by masterpieces from all over the continent.
In 2019, Xayiya began contributing to his family’s 300-work collection, which includes among the world’s largest caches of legends such as Gerard Sekoto and George Pemba. Xayiya works for one of his family’s companies and increasingly stewards their collection, opening their home to guests from the local RMB Latitudes Art Fair last month.
While he’s always bought from his gut, Xayiya is growing to understand the importance of knowledge and context when it comes to appreciating art. He advises new art buyers to take their time when it comes to learning about the works they’re drawn to. “It's not about rushing yourself,” he said.
Xayiya also advises those interested in buying art to see as much of the stuff as possible. “Every email invitation I get, I’ll always do my best to attend,” he said. Fledgling collectors in particular should keep an open mind. “Go to as many fairs as possible,” Xayiya urged. “Anything that has to do with art, no matter how big or small.”
Delora Xuanqiao Che
Founder, MACA Art Center, Jakarta
In 2014, Delora Xuanqiao Che started interning at her father’s furniture company, Red Star Macalline. Her first project was co-curating an exhibition alongside China’s UCCA Center for Contemporary Art. Che got hooked on viewing art—then, on purchasing it.
She founded Beijing’s Macalline Art Center in 2022 with support from Red Star Macalline. The institution aims to support China’s experimental art scene, showing international artists like Patty Chang alongside homegrown talents like Liao Wen. Che’s since changed the institution’s name to MACA Art Center, and last year, she took over its funding and started a patronage program.
Che herself collects boundary-pushing international artists like Kasia Fudakowski and David Douard. Part of being a wizened buyer, she said, is knowing that “people always want to sell you stuff.” Che’s not immune—she just scooped works by Emma McIntyre and sculptor Thea Djordjadze during Art Basel Hong Kong.
With so much art to consume, her advice for collectors sifting through seas of information is simple: “To be a good collector, you need to become [like] a good artist,” she said, explaining how the approach can help one intuit an artwork’s quality. “Don’t buy things that lower your standards,” she noted.
She’s learned to step into an artist’s shoes by witnessing the creative process firsthand—commissioning new video works by Tao Hui and Chen Tianzhuo for MACA Art Center, and even making her own films.
Gabrielle Levitt
Psychology student, New York
Buying art can make moving to a new city feel like home. After her father’s passing in 2022, Gabrielle Levitt and her mother moved to New York. She bought her first work, Kylie Manning’s A Leavetaking (2024), last December. It hasn’t taken long for Levitt’s new home to fill up with pensive, powerful art exploring memory and materiality by the likes of Amie Dicke and Isabella Ducrot.
For those contemplating their first purchase, like Levitt was mere months ago, she notes that the art world is “not as intimidating as you think.” Emerging art—works by artists at the start of their careers—can prove to be a helpful starting point.
“I really started looking with emerging artists,” Levitt said, rather than courting expensive, established names, “building knowledge and awareness—and then bringing in other people.”
Finding the right art advisor is also worthwhile, but it can be as arduous as finding a therapist, and potentially as rewarding. Levitt works with Kate Robinson, who exposes her to new artists without being pushy. Levitt balances “prioritizing your own wants and needs,” she said, “but also pulling in that expert knowledge, because the art world is so vast.”
Geetanjali Joshi
Associate director, Art Mumbai, Mumbai
Geetanjali Joshi had been a dispute resolution lawyer for nine years when COVID’s many Zoom gallery hops and art collective auctions inspired her to start collecting and working in art.
In 2023, she started managing India Art Fair’s Young Collector Programme, providing entertainment and education during the fast-growing art fair. Later that year, Joshi took over exhibitor and VIP relations for Art Mumbai, a new fair launched in 2023. “My exposure is widely different from what it was three years ago,” she said.
In India, the domestic art market is continuing its upward swing. “We’re not seeing as much of a slowdown as there has been in the West,” Joshi observed. She personally favors TARQ gallery in Mumbai and Gallery Espace in New Delhi, and follows their lead on artists to support.
While auctions may seem like a big first step for a new art buyer, Joshi advises collectors to keep an eye on the activity at the houses. Because sales are listed publicly on auction house websites, they can offer a clear view of the artists and themes capturing the art market’s attention. Joshi herself doesn’t bid at auctions yet, but she still attends and advises new collectors to do the same. “See how it works,” she said. “Because eventually, if you continue on this collection journey, you’ll end up there.”
“It’s important to follow those trends,” Joshi said. “It’s also really fun and interesting.”
Lorenzo Perini Natali
President, PROGETTO LUDOVICO, Milan
Lorenzo Perini Natali shares a lineage with Amedeo Modigliani, but only discovered art while visiting his cousin in New York in his early 20s. He’d started working for his family’s companies by then but pivoted, studying visual arts and contemporary markets before joining Sotheby’s Milan.
Some 11 years later, Perini Natali has amassed a collection of 100 artworks and has started PROGETTO LUDOVICO—a nomadic nonprofit facilitating exhibitions, residencies, and research. He’s evolved from collecting young Italian artists like Marco Pariani and Linda Carrara to farther-flung industrial artists like Marie Matusz and David Ostrowski.
Perini Natali is proud to have honed his taste through education and visiting artists in their studios. “You can tell that all the works were bought by the same person,” he observed of his collection. “It’s a bit of an artwork, the collection itself.”
Though he’s cherished direct relationships with artists since starting his studies, Perini Natali makes sure to buy through galleries—and advises new art buyers to do the same.
“That’s what some people do, and it's not right, because you're not supporting the system,” he said. He also resists seeing his collection as a financial asset. “I don’t sell,” he said. “If I do, it’s to buy something else, but it’s very rare.”
Jessica Luciano Cinel
Studio manager, São Paulo
In 2016, while earning her master’s at London’s Sotheby’s Institute, Jessica Luciano Cinel sashayed onto the art scene as a young collector with style.
A decade later, she’s stopped traveling as frequently for art world events. “I don’t like a lot of art fairs,” Luciano Cinel said. She disagrees with the ‘first-look’ FOMO mentality some galleries foster to stoke sales at the events.
Luciano Cinel started advising artists like Tádaskía and Luana Vitra in 2023, after leading São Paulo’s Museu Brasileiro da Escultura e Ecologia for two years. Collecting is a “consequence” of her artistic research now, conducted through dealers like São Paulo’s Mitre Gallery and Yehudi Hollander-Pappi gallery. From Japanese sculptor Kishio Suga to Brazilian painter O Bastardo, Luciano Cinel considers borders and limits her collection’s conceptual centerpiece.
Prioritizing boundaries also constitutes the crux of her advice. When friends ask Luciano Cinel about collecting, she typically says, “just go slow.”
It’s easy to get wrapped up in your emotions and the speed of things, but limits matter in this fast-paced, relationship-driven art world.
Felix Xu
Tech CEO, Singapore
At the end of 2022, Beijing-born blockchain firm founder Felix Xu attended his first art fair and became a poster child for a new generation of NFT collectors engaging in fine art, like Justin Sun, the buyer of Maurizio Cattelan’s Comedian (2019). He’s since visited Frieze Seoul, Frieze London, and Art Basel Hong Kong, and has hosted parties for ART SG in Singapore.
Xu’s also tapped researcher and gallerist Echo Yu He to help grow his art collection, titled “Wind,” which bridges celebrated sculptor Huma Bhaba and VR pioneer Rachel Rossin with emergent names like textile artist Akea Brionne and painter Xingzi Gu.
Coming from a business background, Xu called art “the most opaque industry that I have ever encountered.” As a result, he advises new buyers to research as much as possible by consuming as much information about the art they’re interested in as they have an appetite for. This can include everything from reading magazines, to visiting galleries, to keeping a log of what you like. Indeed, he and Yu He have built their own resource—a database of 150 artists and counting, tracking metrics like auction prices, institutional acquisitions, residencies, and more.
Chibundu Onuzo
Author, London
Growing up, Chibundu Onuzo’s parents knew of Nigerian masters like Ben Enwonwu, but they certainly weren’t collectors. Buying art only occurred to her in 2017, after an artist friend started taking her out to shows. Onuzo saw a Marcellina Akpotojor textile that the London and Lagos gallery Rele shared on social media around that time. Smitten, Onuzo approached the gallery about the work and got it.
Since then, Onuzo has learned to identify potential on her own, and comes across new artists by seeing as much as what’s out there and trusting her gut. She acquired a work by the fast-rising abstract painter Pam Evelyn, for instance, before the artist was working with a gallery.
When Onuzo started collecting, she kicked herself for not knowing about certain artists sooner, or before prices for their artworks rocketed upwards.
“I could have bought very established artists for not a lot of money,” she said. Or, she could’ve been bolder, buying more of Akpotojor’s early works. Fortunately, as Onuzo assures the new collectors she actively recruits, “you haven’t missed the boat.” Every year, a new crop of artists emerges onto the scene, ready to be discovered.
Lateefa Bin Hamoodah
Cultural strategist, Abu Dhabi
Lateefa Bin Hamoodah’s passion for art began while traveling with family, and grew at Abu Dhabi’s Sorbonne, where she realized that studying art can teach you about everything.
She started buying photographs and prints around 2016, because they were easy to transport. Now, Bin Hamoodah has filled her family’s home to the point that her mother advised sending some of her holdings to Munich. Alas, Bin Hamoodah has “attachment issues” and likes sharing her art with peers from the Dubai Collection, the city’s first institutional collection, at a moment’s notice.
During COVID-19, Bin Hamoodah mostly collected Emirati artists. But she’s since become enamored with international conceptual artists garnering institutional over commercial acclaim, like Agnes Questionmark. “It’s cool to be able to transcend a painting,” Bin Hamoodah reflected.
Sometimes with buying art, the best reward doesn’t live in the home, but in the heart. If you truly believe in an artist’s work, supporting their practice and building a relationship is priceless, and Bin Hamoodah advises new buyers to think about how buying artworks also helps to support the artists behind them.
“An art collector or patron should really disconnect from their self,” Bin Hamoodah stated, “and think of how to be giving.”
from Artsy News https://ift.tt/4PTL1hI
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