There is a terrific post called Keeping Private Collections Private at Edward Winkleman today which tackles the tricky issues of gallery conflict and private information flow. While the piece admirably works through most of the salient points, I’d like to add a few collector-focused nuances. (It probably makes sense to read his post first if you haven’t already, as these comments build on the context of his discussion.)

When we, as collectors, get interested in a certain artist’s work, we tend to do our homework. This means that while we may have been introduced to the work at one gallery, it is not at all unusual for us to contact half a dozen other galleries around the world who carry work by this artist, in search of that single piece that we find most appealing. We do this not to “go around” our local or preferred dealer, but because the reality is that work is unevenly distributed in the market, and our favorite piece may just as likely be in Los Angeles, Chicago, Berlin or London as in New York.

For photographers who are no longer living, this is particularly true: in searching out prints by Bill Brandt or Imogen Cunningham for example, we have talked with the galleries that represent their estates, but also with literally dozens of others who may have had a piece at one time or another. For living artists, the search area tends to be smaller (perhaps a handful of galleries), but even in this case, certain galleries resonate with certain bodies of work more than others or certain dealers only carry certain sizes, and so it isn’t unreasonable to check with all of them, even if there might be quite a bit of overlap. A byproduct of this search is often some surprising information about pricing, showing works from the same edition priced differently in different markets. Once we have all the data, we can then decide from whom we might want to make a purchase, armed with quite a bit more context about the reality of the overall situation (perhaps knowing that there are multiple options or perhaps knowing that there is only one print that we really want).

At this point, all else equal, we would certainly prefer to patronize our favorite dealers (most collectors feel the same way I imagine). But the reality is that more often than not, all else is not equal, and the piece we want most is somewhere else. I think the argument about supporting your “local” dealer goes along an entirely different plane. This line of thinking centers on supporting businesses that you like and want to succeed, keeping dollars in your local community, and making sure neighborhood storefronts have galleries in them rather than big box stores. And if as a collector, you can find a way to balance finding the work you want with supporting the local gallery, this is a great outcome. But being harassed by your local dealer for buying elsewhere seems shortsighted and/or naïve on his/her part (I entirely agree with the argument as put forth in the original post), as if you’re local, you’ll almost certainly be back in the future.

Over the years, we have seen that collectors seem to fall into one of two buckets. One group selects two or three primary dealers and funnels nearly all of their buying through these galleries, building up deep trust relationships over time. Often they ask them to search out certain works for their collections or use the dealers to bid for them at auction. These collectors work in partnership with these galleries to build their collections over a long time scale. In return for the focused attention by the dealer, there are expectations that a collector will buy if not frequently at least consistently.

The other group (to which we belong) feels comfortable interacting with a wide range of dealers from all over the world, and so we tend to do our own searching and comparing, rather than having a specific dealer present us with a prescreened set of choices. For us, the hunting and gathering process is actually the fun part, and we don’t mind investing the time to do the leg work and go down plenty of blind alleys. This makes us less “loyal” to any one dealer or gallery, but more likely to build up a broader group of galleries that we patronize from time to time. The danger of this approach is that the very best pieces may be offered to the key clients first, leaving us to pick up what is left over. So part of our challenge is to make sure we stay well connected to the galleries that have the kind of material we like, so that we stay “top of mind” when a new piece becomes available. Buying history undoubtedly influences access to new work.

The final topic covered in this post is keeping buying information private. I think the post does an excellent job of making clear that the art world is a small universe and gossip and information are important currencies flowing in all directions (back to the word-of-mouth effects I was discussing yesterday). There is no way to change this, so collectors must find ways to comfortably handle the natural information exchange that goes on. We certainly understand the desire to have confidentiality. But we have also found that being open and sharing our collection (via this site and our collection site) has created all sorts of unexpected opportunities and relationships, and that these positives have vastly outweighed any negatives associated with posting our collection on the Internet. Galleries and dealers now need only look at our site to know what we are interested or what we have bought recently. This enables much deeper and more relevant discussions to happen more quickly, with less time spent on preliminaries that aren’t a fit.

I do agree that if confidentiality is paramount to a collector, they need only to make this clear to the dealer and the information will with all likelihood stay secret (as no gallery owner is looking to overtly anger a client). But while there is something more than a little distasteful about prices being bandied about, in the end, the art world information machine can be turned to a collector’s advantage by learning how to leverage it. In our experience, the more people that have a clear understanding of what we’re interested in, the more likely it is that we will be exposed to work that lights up our eyes. If that comes from one dealer telling another we bought a certain piece for a certain price, then so be it.

Over the past few days, Conscientious has had a series of insightful posts about the positives and negatives of artist’s statements (here, here, here, and here). While most of the ground has been covered in a thoughtful way, I thought there might be a couple of nuances from a collector’s perspective that would be worth adding to the discussion.

For us, artist statements are like road maps: they give us clues to better understand the work we are seeing. Optimally, they should be as clear and to the point as possible, thereby making it more likely that any background information that is important is actually passed along and internalized. Statements that are lost in jargon and art speak miss the chance to educate us. Our attention span for this kind of stuff is short (press releases fall into the same category), so make it hard hitting or you’ll lose us quickly, and we’ll go back to looking at the pictures and deciding for ourselves.

The Silicon Valley style “elevator pitch” (a one to two sentence summary) is probably an oversimplified way of communicating for the art world, but the reason entrepreneurs use it is that it is the single easiest way to control the message to someone who doesn’t know much about you (and it’s also the most likely way to ensure the message is passed on to another person without getting garbled). To my mind, the artist statement should have the same goal: convey the salient points quickly and cleanly, in the hopes that the reader/viewer will actually remember them.

In some ways, an artist’s career can be thought of as the ultimate exercise in word of mouth. Galleries are constantly trying to place important works with well known museums to validate their quality. Positive remarks by an influential critic are circulated to the mailing list. Select pieces are “placed” with important collectors, so that other collectors can see them and hear about them. It’s all about creating a positive feedback loop and feeding the beast, year after year, with each successive release of new work.

When you’re early in your career, there is no word of mouth yet, and very few opinions have been formed. This is the exact moment that the statement was designed for; it is the one opportunity to frame the discussion before it goes its own way. If you decide not to take it and leave the work open for interpretation, fair enough, but you missed the chance to anchor us somewhere.

Once you’re an established or mid-career artist, the word of mouth is in full swing, and many voices have added their opinions (valid or invalid) to the mix. The crowd has spoken and the collective wisdom drowns out much of the rest of the commentary. With each successive group of new work, the marginal utility/value of any single statement by the artist is decreased, because it has to compete with the larger and larger pile of consensus thought about the artist’s overall approach and history. Therefore, the statements at the beginning of the career are the ones that have the most power to direct the discussion; later on, the overall flow has a mind of its own that is nearly impossible to modify.

So our simple summary advice on statements would be the following: don’t miss the chance to direct our thinking (especially early in your career) and make sure you do it concisely so it sticks.

Last evening, we attended a party for an out of town friend at a cozy restaurant on the Lower East Side. It was one of those dinners where you are separated from your spouse and carefully placed by the host according to some grand plan for maximum social effectiveness. One of my dinner partners turned out to be a person who works in the development department of an art museum. Through the first several courses of the meal, we had a wide ranging insider discussion about museums, capital and annual campaigns, how big gifts are targeted and brought in, how boards and accession committees are filled out, and the hierarchical nature of different classes of donors.

The singular takeaway for me from this entertaining conversation was that given the current economic environment, museums are really struggling to uncover new, fresh, deep pocketed donors that aren’t already affiliated with another museum in some meaningful way or that they haven’t already talked with. The list of targets is pretty stale, and it’s arguably shrinking. This has led them to start searching farther afield (the net has to get wider), often outside the local geography, and most intriguingly, getting connected to many folks who haven’t as yet shown any interest whatsoever in art. The sales pitch to these targets is that even if art isn’t your thing, a large donation to such a museum brings with it an important mark of status and an entrée into a network of high powered people of all kinds.

None of this is of course news or should be wildly surprising; in fact it’s standard operating procedure – if you’ve got to raise a big pile of money (in whatever context), you focus on those who have such money to give, and come up with some factors that will appeal to them. But it got me to wondering more deeply, is there an impact on the spirit of your institution over time if the majority of your board members and major supporters are giving money not because they are passionate about the cause (in this case, art), but because they are doing it for the ancillary benefits of the gala invitations or business contacts? Does the soul of the place get hollowed out? How many mail-it-in directors and donors can an institution handle?

Having seen firsthand plenty of dysfunctional boards/companies in a business context, it is clear to me that a less than attentive board can do an enormous amount of damage, can waste precious time focusing on the wrong things, and can derail positive momentum quite quickly. But it’s also true, and we’re seeing it in spades these days with the daily news stories about museum layoffs, that without money, these institutions crumble under their own weight equally fast. Money is what pays for exhibitions, and salaries, and conservation, and new buildings, not passion and erudition.

Which brings me to the paradox: is it a fantasy that a major museum can be fully funded by wealthy donors who also happen to be passionate about art? Is it inevitable that a museum has to choose between more money from donors who may not have much interest in the activities of the institution, or less from those who care more deeply? Of course, many will now immediately protest that their specific institution is only funded by passionate art patrons, that their board is filled with only important collectors and art world professionals, etc. etc. But imagine you are a museum with a less than perfect financial picture right now (not hard to do). Do you take the much needed money from donors who aren’t obviously aligned with your going forward plan (and may potentially be a permanent pain in the ass), or go without, thereby reducing your options for producing good exhibitions and holding onto key staff, forcing you to scale back your program? While this might be an oversimplification of a complex situation, and perhaps the easy answer is always “take the money”, either way, it is an undeniably tough choice. No wonder museum directors and development groups are so stressed these days.