Art Advisers Roundtable

Photo by Michael Edwards

Site: Louise Blouin Media headquarters, New York City

Key Advice
for Collecting in These Uncertain Times

Mary Hoeveler

“There are opportunities in virtually every collecting field right now. If you want to play it safe, concentrate on established secondary-market artists, negotiate well, and take a long-term view.”

Abigail Asher

“Careful and selective buying of 20th- and 21st-century masterpieces is what I would focus on. That’s the area people felt priced out of in the past few years. This is actually an exciting time.”

Stefano Basilico

“Collectors should be selective and careful in their choices. Condition becomes paramount, especially if it’s an editioned work. Look at each piece with a jaundiced eye. It’s not worth a risk.”

Allan Schwartzman

“Look for undervalued areas in every price range. These are times when people crave art of profound beauty or meaning. The art that means the most holds its value— spiritually and financially.”

Richard Serra Yayoi Kusama Hans Hofmann Lucio Fontana Ad Reinhardt Jean Arp Hans Hofmann Piero Manzoni

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TONY FREUND: And how do you think emerging artists’ work will fare in these days of uncertainty?

ALLAN SCHWARTZMAN: There are different levels of emerging art. For the emerging artists whose prices got pushed, after one show, to the $30,000 level, there might be a lot more thought that goes into buying them. One of the vulnerabilities in this market is that in the past year or two there was an acceleration of raising primary-market prices to the secondary-market level.

SARAH DOUGLAS: What do you say to a client who is holding on to some works by an artist whose prices have become significantly inflated?

ALLAN SCHWARTZMAN: Art has never been a highly liquid asset. To look upon it in terms of three-month, six-month, even one-year projections in value is dangerous and inappropriate. Most collectors, except for a handful who entered in the past year and a half, will find that over a 10-year period, if they bought art wisely, they will have done better with their art than they did with their stocks. And as I kept hearing in the ’90s, "at least it’s something I love and believe in, and I can enjoy it."

ABIGAIL ASHER: In boom times the herd mentality is dominant. What we learned from the ’90s was that you had to be looking at things as an individual, not just do what everybody else was doing.

ALLAN SCHWARTZMAN: In the past decade, emerging collectors have had a much higher level of knowledge.

MARY HOEVELER: The legacy of the ’80s was that the market got democratized. That was part of the auction house legacy. But I do think people are much more sophisticated as collectors now. That’s why this crash hasn’t been as extreme.

STEFANO BASILICO: In the ’80s, informed collectors didn’t have advisers. Now they do, because we bring something to the table that is valuable to them.

END: 01/09/09 2:35 P.M.

"Art Advisers Round-Table" originally appeared in the March 2009 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's March 2009 Table of Contents.