Dealers as Collectors

The Artnewspaper has a good article on the dealer collector.  It touches on both the good and the bad, as more dealers collect and display their collections.  The article doesn't suppose that this is a new concept, but it does touch on collectors complaining that a gallerist may keep better or selected works off the market for their own collection and gain or perhaps collect at a wholesale price while other collectors are paying retail.

I personally don't see anything wrong with a dealer collecting art, and I would think that most do collect. As anyone who is in the fine and decorative art business, it is usually a passion and all consuming. In any event, the article is interesting.

The Artnewspaper states

It is hardly a secret that many dealers own art—serious collectors are aware of this, and generally don’t mind. “It is important for dealers to be supportive of the artists in their programmes and own their work,” said New York collector Randy Slifka.

But there is always the potential for bad behaviour. For many buyers, the biggest complaint is about dealers who keep the first pick to themselves, getting the best pieces at wholesale cost. Paris-based collector Steve Rosenblum doesn’t mind working with dealers who collect—up to a point. “I don’t really care. Good for them,” he said. “The only pitfall could be that they access pieces before their customers can have a look at them. So, the question is, do they pre-empt the best work? Or is there some balance?”

A New York collector, who has been buying for more than 30 years and asked not to be named, recalled discovering, during a visit to a dealer’s loft, that the gallerist in question had been keeping back works superior to those he had been offering his clients.

And there are other issues. “I am really not happy when I go to art fairs and dealers have swapped stuff at below market price, especially when I have flown to some exotic or rainy destination only to find the work has already sold, not to a museum, but to an insider,” one collector confided

To read the complete Artnewspaper article, click HERE.