I remember standing in the corner of a crowded opening in Chelsea, clutching a lukewarm glass of Prosecco while watching a young painter try to “network” his way through a room of collectors. He was using every rehearsed, hollow pleasantry in the book, looking less like a creator and more like a man reading a […]
Stop performing for the security guards. There is this pervasive, exhausting myth that if you walk into a museum solo, you are somehow required to adopt a look of profound, intellectual suffering—as if you’re one wrong glance away from being exposed as a fraud. Most people treat a solo trip like a high-stakes exam they […]
I spent twenty-six years watching people treat art like a commodity and even more time watching collectors treat their music like mere clutter. There is a particular brand of nonsense floating around the internet lately—expensive, aesthetic-focused nonsense—suggesting that you need custom-built mahogany shelving and a professional archivist to manage your library. Let’s be clear: if […]
I remember sitting in the back of my gallery in the late nineties, watching a young landscape painter try to work with a twenty-piece “professional starter set” he’d bought online for a steal. He was struggling to control the pigment, looking more frustrated than inspired, because he was trying to use a tiny, expensive detailer […]
The art supply industry wants you to believe that mastering color is some high-minded, mystical alchemy reserved for the masters, but they’re mostly just trying to sell you expensive, pre-mixed tubes that lose their soul the moment they hit the canvas. I remember sitting in my gallery back in the nineties, looking at a landscape […]
I remember a young painter in my third year of running the gallery—a brilliant boy with heavy, textured oils—who walked in with a series of stunning canvases that he’d decided to “save money” on by using thin, flimsy clip-on borders he’d found online. I watched a collector walk right past his entire wall because those […]
Stop treating a trip to see the modern art collections in European cities like a pilgrimage to a holy site where you aren’t allowed to ask about the price tag. I spent twenty-six years watching tourists and wide-eyed collectors wander through the Pompidou or the Tate, nodding sagely at canvases they didn’t understand, while the […]
Most people approach the idea of building a collection as if they’re decorating a hotel lobby—buying whatever looks “right” above a sofa or matches the rug. It’s a polite, expensive way to waste money. If you’re looking for a guide on how to curate a home art gallery that simply tells you which frames look […]
I remember sitting in the back of a dusty studio in the late nineties, watching a young landscape painter spend three weeks obsessing over the exact botanical accuracy of a single fern, only to have a serious collector walk past his work because the entire composition felt lifeless. Most people think that mastering techniques for […]
Stop listening to the glossy brochures and the “experts” on YouTube who treat numismatics like a high-stakes game of Wall Street poker. They want you to believe that learning how to start a vintage coin collection requires a massive inheritance and a private vault, when in reality, most of them are just trying to sell […]