Amazon to Offer Fine Art

The NY Times is reporting that Amazon is now in discussion with numerous smaller, yet established fine art galleries to begin offering fine art.

The article specifically notes the art which is going to be offered is more than the typical art posters and prints.  There is no doubt that online art sales are growing and becoming increasingly more popular with the collector community.  The article notes other online art sites, such as Artspace are seeing more and more high dollar sales, and breaking through the $100,000 threshold.

 Is this another technology disrupt for the art world and collecting community?

The NY Times reports

But the landscape is shifting rapidly, and it is about to be tilted by the entry of a heavyweight: Amazon is in discussions with dozens of smaller established galleries to begin offering contemporary and other fine art, moving well beyond the posters and inexpensive prints it now offers.

The expected decision would represent Amazon’s re-entry into the art world, after it also made an early unsuccessful try, as partner to Sotheby’s, in 1999. It would join several well-established players in the online market, like Artsy, a high-end seller that uses a Pandora-like algorithm search feature; Paddle8, an online auction site; Artnet, which is back in the business with auctions; and Artspace, which has partnerships with dozens of prestigious galleries and museums offering works from $100 prints to a $2.5 million Cy Twombly painting.

A spokesman for Amazon said in an e-mail that the company had no comment about plans for an art venture, first reported by The Art Newspaper. But several of the galleries in discussion with the company have said that the sales might begin this month and several told The Wall Street Journal that Amazon would charge the seller a commission of 5 percent to 20 percent.

It is unclear whether the company will focus on lower-end sales of prints and photographs or also try to move into the market for higher priced one-of-a-kind works like paintings and sculpture. The growth of online sales has been fueled primarily by three factors: a broadening base of art collectors around the world; a much greater willingness by those people, both veteran collectors and newcomers, to trust online transactions and buy works after seeing only pictures of them; and a huge amount of inventory in the storehouses of galleries, as a growing number of art fairs and other exhibitions leads to more artists making ever more work.

Source: The NY Times