A Beginner's Guide to Starting a Meaningful Art Collection, Part 1
Sabrina Howard, Blood, Sweat, and Tears (Gone But Not Forgotten), acrylic on canvas, 2020. Sabrina Howard is a visual artist and designer living and working in Jackson, Mississippi. Learn more about Sabrina and her work here.
True confession: It took me 34 years to call myself an artist. I associated that label with self-indulgence, narcissism, and a whole mess of bad connotations that I bought into and wanted to avoid.
I got over it by realizing that each of us brings our own value systems to everything we do. Narcissistic artists would be narcissists if they weren’t artists. Egomaniac fill-in-the-blanks would be egomaniacs if they weren’t fill-in-the-blanks.
Which brings me to art collections.
Close your eyes and imagine an art collector. Early on in my career, some of stereotypes I had surrounding collectors included the following: Wealthy. More than one home. Comfortable in galleries and museum spaces. Well-versed in art history and theory. Board member of influential organizations. Donor.
I’d like to propose blowing this up. Happily, there are a ton of folks who love and collect art and who are none of these things.
Three reasons to start an art collection now:
Conscious consumerism. News flash: artists are entrepreneurs and small business owners. By purchasing art regularly, you are directly supporting creative small businesses, assisting in establishing the careers of artists, and impacting the artist’s local economy.
Target art is bullshit. Let’s be real – we’re all spending a lot more time at home these days, and none of us want to stare at Live, Laugh, Love inspirational posters all day long. Next.
It can be a smart financial move. Art *tends* to appreciate as an investment over time - even contemporary art. This is a much more complicated discussion and clearly depends on a variety of risks, factors, and selection bias in the art market. Yet, according to Troy Sadler, Managing Director of Art Works, the 2008 crisis led to a boom in the art market from 2009-2019, as folks wanted to invest in more “safe haven assets.”
But I don’t know anything about Art.
If I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard that.
Guess what? You don’t have to. I’m of the opinion that anything that’s meaningful to you can be the basis of a collection. (Except Live, Laugh, Love posters. If that’s your jam, this is not the blog for you. Good luck and God bless.)
You can collect yarn bombed bicycles. Carol Horn, Intertwine installation, ISU Design on Main, Ames, Iowa, 2016. Learn more about Intertwine here.
An art collection can be literal. You can collect shoulder length earrings, alpaca sweaters, ticket stubs for theatre productions, concert posters, postcards from every place you’ve traveled. Above all, your art collection should reflect your values. Only you know what’s important to you - social justice, sustainability, your hometown, your faith, your family.
Next week, we’ll dive into how to get started in connecting with artists who make work that’s inspiring to you.
Have a friend who loves Target art? Share this and change their life. :)
Read A Beginner’s Guide to Starting a Meaningful Art Collection, Part II and Part III.
Started a collection and wanna frame it? I got you covered. Start here: How to Hang Art on Your Walls, Part I.