Art Market Depression

Panelists at Rochester Contemporary talk entitled "Think Globally. Create, Experience & Collect Locally."
Panelists at Rochester Contemporary talk entitled “Think Globally. Create, Experience & Collect Locally.”

RoCo’s event was billed as “Think Globally. Create, Experience & Collect Locally.” Sounded great.

Louis Perticone from Artisan Works, Nan Miller, who ran a gallery under her name for forty years, and Bradley Butler, a painter and gallery director/curator at Main Street Arts in Clifton Springs, just thirty five minutes from here, were the featured panelists. Grant Holcomb, the former Memorial Art Gallery director was sitting behind us. RoCo ran out of chairs, they had a good crowd.

Nan Miller, who represented Albert Paley and specialized in prints and multiples by internationally known artists addressed how everything has changed with the internet. People become aware of an artist and track him or her down on their own. Art Fairs are putting gallery owners like her out of business. Louis Perticone buys artists’ work in bulk, by the thousands, and rents it out to institutions. “I look for something I can put in a hospital, nothing too far out.” He said he has over a thousand photographs in Rochester General Hospital. And if I heard him right he does this as a not-for-profit. He stressed that less than one percent of artists make money. Instead “they fuel the art market by being consumers of art materials.” Bradley Butler’s “Main Street Arts” in Clifton Springs is an oasis. With artfully curated theme shows, curated group shows and artists in residence he brings art lovers to that small town, a real feat. He is not the owner however his situation is more like a dream.

Peggi and I went because we consider ourselves very small time collectors. We have very little wall space but we buy what we love. We bought Warhols with my brother in the mid seventies and took them to auction at Christie’s last year. We found this talk depressing but we probably have our heads in the clouds.

1 Comment

One Reply to “Art Market Depression”

  1. To hell with them. People always say the book is dead, too, but I don’t see it. Some ridiculous piece in the NYTimes about how art has no intrinsic value. I turned the page. Don’t have time for this nonsense.

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