Interview with a Collector

Bloomberg recently published an article and interview with top art collector and gallerist Thomas Olbricht. The short article discuss what to collect (contemporary in general and Chinese contemporary particular) and discusses the growing concept of art as an asset.

Bloomberg reports

Art -- particularly contemporary -- has gained legitimacy as an asset class, says Olbricht.

“Art is a new focus after the stock market, gold and so on,” he says. “I give lectures to bankers on the subject.”

He dismisses fears about the art-market crash of 2008-9, when the price of contemporary works fell as much as 50 percent.

“Not all artists went down by that much,” he says. “Then they went back up faster than the normal financial markets.”

He points out that the pool of buyers for contemporary art has expanded massively since when he first started collecting.

“There are probably now 3,000 or 4,000 people who are prepared to give at least $2 million for art,” he says. “It’s spread from America to Europe to India, China, Turkey and Indonesia. There are so many newly rich families with no tradition of collecting. They have no idea about Old Masters, and so they buy contemporary.”

Click HERE to read the full article.