Art For Money's Sake
In the article, "Art for Money's Sake" published in the New York Times by William Alden on Feb. 3, 2015, it explains a new way of storing priceless art. This art storage company is called Uovo. It was a building built from the ground up in Long Island City, Queens. It has a vault with "Mission: Impossible" -grade security and state of the art technology for cataloging the art work. This artwork is not mean to be seen like in a museum, it is just stored by its owners, held as a liquid asset. The pieces are bare coded and can be tracked by any potential buyers and or sellers. More and more wealthier Americans are investing there money in art since the Great Recession. People are trading art like a Wall Street- style investor would. This type of change in the art world is leading towards a regulated business, while currently the art trade business is unregulated.
Article Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/08/magazine/art-for-moneys-sake.html?ref=economy
Article Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/08/magazine/art-for-moneys-sake.html?ref=economy
Analysis:
I feel that this could be bad for the artist because it is all about the value of the painting and not about the art itself. It could put certain artists out of business. Artists' paintings could be stored long- term and devalued and forgotten. This new system could monopolize certain artists or pieces of art. Art was originally intended to be seen and appreciated. Then art become an assets to a family and or business. This is now reversing it by revolutionizing the art world. I don't like the idea of this because art is something to be admired, not turned into a liquid assets. I hope this industry doesn't take off because it goes against the true intention of art.
Discussion Questions:
- Why is Uovo trying to control buying and selling of art?
- Are we moving towards just seeing art on the internet and not at museums?
2. Art is moving towards the internet because of two simple reasons which is that there's a larger audience you can show your art too and it makes it easier to get around instead of having it being manually transported and allowing there to be a risk of damage of theft to the piece.
ReplyDelete1. Uovo is trying to be the middle man in the art trading business. They provide a safe place to store any kind of art and provide safe services being the middleman in art transactions to make their profit.
ReplyDelete2. I don't think that we are moving art to the internet, but rather establishing painting as a way to make money whether you were the actual painter or just someone trying to flip them for profit. Museums have a certain charm about them that will not be lost anytime soon.
First off, I didn't even know that this was a business. Being an art museum-goer myself, I value the art you can see in a museum. However you raise an interesting point that art is something to be admired not stored away in a warehouse. Then again, a majority of the world's most valuable pieces of art are hanging in museums... maybe Uovo won't be as impacting as we think.
ReplyDelete