Art is more than an asset in your portfolio

On Tuesday the New York Times published a piece on a $70 million, 280,00 square foot facility set to host thousands of works of art from the old masters to contemporary artists. The problem?

Only interested buyers will ever see the works inside. (See article here.)

Never mind the emotion art elicits, never mind the power of its message. Let's hope a piece appreciates enough in value within the next fiscal year to make a profit. We've relegated art to commodities trading, pushed aside as another inessential asset effectively cheapening the craft artists have spent their lives developing.

One commenter said, "Conceptual art project: I skip the part about making a painting or a sculpture, and just create a bar code that I submit to this storage facility, noting its availability as an investment. No need to worry about the physical existence of any art object that people actually look at. No need to worry about tastemakers or trends over time; just watch as the demand for this non-object fluctuates unpredictably, just as it will for all the stored objects."

The beauty of art is that it projects the identity of its maker. It preserves the knowledge, the heritage, and the wisdom of the times (or lack thereof). These artists, through their medium, form an interpersonal connection with humans across time. Locking up works of art for an indefinite period of time robs society to benefit a few. But we're not worried about that are we.

Love // Christelle