Artspace is a global online art gallery boasting high value artworks from renowned galleries including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim and the Barbican. In just over two years, the site has amassed a community of over 200,000 collectors worldwide and sales have raised $1.5 million dollars for non-profit organisations. Rachel Salmon spoke to co-founder Catherine Levene about her experience as a digital entrepreneur and the challenges of online curation.
How does Artspace differ from other art sites?
I really believe that anybody who is promoting art and exposing art to a broader audience is doing a good thing, but we are the only platform that you can transact on, and buy this calibre of art from museums, galleries and cultural institutions.
How did you persuade so many prestigious galleries and artists to work with you?
Myself and my business partner had a lot of trusted relationships in the art world. Over time [Artspace] has become a place major galleries and institutions want to be, because they are in good company.
I think we have created a contextual environment that makes sense for them; we are really respectful of their brands [and] we have an editorial team that writes about their programming, the artists and the galleries.
How do you select the artists you work with?
We are not a platform where anybody can come up and sell their work. We’re a curated platform working with what we believe to be the best contemporary artists and the most promising rising stars in the art world, of which there are very many! I’m sure we miss some, but we try to do our best to promote what we believe to be really important artists.
In many cases museums and non-profit organisations already have artwork to sell. We have discovered a treasure trove donated by artists for the sole purpose of supporting their favourite organisation – from Saul Levitt to Louise Bourgeois, Dan Flavin, Richard Serra – major, major artists. It’s just too expensive for each institution to set up a site that can garner that audience, so it’s great to not just sell the work, but promote the museums and non profits’ missions
You have raised $1.5 million for charitable organisations. How did you do that?
Every work sold on Artspace goes back to either an artist, a museum, a cultural institution or a gallery.
We are success-based, so we take a commission on what we sell, but the lion’s share goes to our partners.
So, for example, our partners in the United States range from cultural institutions like the Metropolitan Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, the Lincoln Centre for the Arts, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, to non profit organisations like Charity Water, which does important things to support the environment, to other nonprofits who have art to sell to support their organisations.
We came here [to London] and said ‘we want to help’. London is our second biggest market. We know that a lot of institutions are always looking for new sources of funding because government support for the arts has declined, so we signed up several who are now selling art on our platform.
So it’s a better way of selling art, for them, than an auction?
A lot of the work is not appropriate to sell in an auction format; many auctions are focused on a particular price point. You don’t have to wait for an auction. It’s always up online and you are exposing it to a wider audience base.
There are relatively few people who can walk into an auction house and bid for artworks. There are 25 million households in the US alone who buy works of art, let alone the rest of the world, and they are not buying from auction houses. [The site has also now launched an auction platform, however.]
How does your clientele differ from the traditional art market?
I think it’s a combination of existing collectors, who buy from us because they are finding such a treasure trove of work they didn’t know existed, [and new collectors].
Even if you are an existing collector you can’t be in 12 places at once. You can’t be in London and New
York and Mexico City and Rio de Janeiro and Reykjavik, all of where we have art galleries selling work at the same time. Not everyone can travel to every single art fair. So it’s a platform not constrained by four walls, it’s not constrained by geography or hours of operation.
We also believe that we are expanding the market of people who are buying contemporary fine art. We know there is a very large market of art enthusiasts who have the means, the interest and the capacity to collect art, but who don’t for whatever reason because it could be intimidating, they haven’t spent the time educating themselves, they don’t feel comfortable walking into an art gallery, or they are busy during the day. We also believe the next generation of collectors will expect to buy at least some portion of their art online.
What sort of art do you like collecting?
I look at my site every day and I covet so much of what’s on there.
I started collecting in my twenties and the only thing I could afford to buy at the time were limited edition prints that I would buy from non-profit outfits. I bought a Ross Bleckner photograph for $100 from a non profit organisation he supports called ACRIA, which works with people living with HIV and AIDS. Over time, as I got into my career and had the capacity to buy more I just decided to continue. But even with the interest and capacity, [I struggled] finding the time to educate myself.
You have an online magazine to educate people about art and help people research the market. Is buying art a bit like investing?
It’s interesting the way people feel about art and living with art. For the same price as a pair of [designer] shoes, the emotional attachment happens to be stronger, therefore it’s a much more considered purchase. So we are trying to help people to educate themselves and give them the capacity to buy more work wherever it exists. It could be in their local community or in another country, and also to take the intimidation factor out of the process.
Art is the last of the luxury goods categories to be transformed by the internet. People often say to me, and I feel it too, that art today is where fashion was six or seven years ago, when people said ‘women are just not going to buy high-end couture online’. Fast forward to today and it is the largest online retail category.
You advise web start-ups, what advice would you give to someone setting up a web business?
I think to have a lot of passion for what you do. It is an all-consuming enterprise. I think it’s really important to surround yourself with a group of advisers you can trust, and who are diverse. Running web businesses requires technological knowledge, vertical knowledge, depending on the kind of business you are trying to set up, and business knowledge as well.
I have a wonderful group of advisors and investors that I can count on to help us and I think that is really critical.
Starting your own business is a really fun and passionate enterprise. I am so encouraged by seeing a young group of women entrepreneurs who are starting their own businesses. Particularly online, women are over 50 per cent of the buying power, so it is obvious that [more of these] businesses should be run by women.
Story published in Libertine, 15 August 2013
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