New Gangs of Gallerists
Sheri Pasquarella, a young art consultant and private dealer, invested in a 27th Street space that once held the Tunnel nightclub until 2001. Several young art gallerists moved their businesses from other parts of the city to a series of old loading docks along the south side of the former Tunnel site. Wanting to create an instant destina­tion location, Pasquarella led the exodus of emerging-artist dealers to a promised land of barren street-level spaces between Eleventh and Twelfth Avenues. Oliver Kamm Gallery, Foxy Production, Derek Eller Gallery, Clementine Gallery, John Connelly Pres­ents and Wallspace are now located here. This has added up to be just one of the most concerted efforts at expand­ing Chelsea’s gallery scene since the art world began abandoning SoHo for the West Side in the mid-1990s.
New Art Networks
Social networks for thirty-somethings in the arts is on the upswing. The Young As­sociates is one of the new social art groups started in Chelsea by a museum space. The Chelsea Art Museum program looks to connect young people with New York’s emerging art com­munity, creating an energet­ic presence in the growth of the museum and a network of innovative thinkers within the arts. The group targets recent graduates and young professionals who would like to learn more about art in an intimate atmosphere that can be pro­vided by a smaller museum. They interact with museum curators, meet artists from New York and create a forum within the framework of the Chelsea Art Museum for networking with other young people in the field. They organize special after par­ties following exhibition openings, cura­tor- led art tours, gallery tours, talks with gallery owners, artist studio visits, invita­tional talks on trends in contemporary art, previews of auctions, and holiday parties.
Innovative Investors
Get out your auction paddles. A new generation of collectors, hedge-fund managers, technology entrepreneurs and
others in their thirties have plunged into the world of contemporary art. During recent years, as world economies waned, prices in the closely watched top 2% of the contemporary-art market were up to 72%, according to London-based Art Mar­ket Research. In contrast, prices of top-tier works in the Old Masters and French Im­pressionist markets fell by 40% and 29%. Christopher Apgar, a young financial adviser, owns works ranging from Jean-Michel Basquiat, the graffiti artist who became an eighties phenomenon, to a silkscreen of Marilyn Monroe by Andy
And while new collectors may be ap­proaching the art market as if it were a marketing venture of capital investments, there is no guarantee that the payoff will be as lofty. The art market can be volatile. The collecting quirks and interests of con­temporary art lovers drive the market. If a few collectors love ocean scenes, prices rise while less favored desert paintings re­main bargains. Fluctuations can differ due to different collectors entering and leaving the art market at various times. The result is an artist may be “hot” for a few years and when prices plateau and rise again; an-
Warhol. His current hunt is for artistic creations by Gregory Crewdson, a photog­rapher whose work includes promotional shots for the HBO series “Six Feet Under,” and Vic Muniz, known for making sculp­tures of iconic figures out of chocolate and then photographing the pieces.
Most young and new collectors have little interest in the Old Masters that capti­vated the previous generation. Part of the reason for the aversion is the astronomi­cal prices they command. Contemporary works are less expensive and are more likely to double in value in a short peri­od. And today, a young collector doesn’t need to spend millions of dollars on a van Gogh to earn the respect of peers. They show they are in touch with the contempo­rary art world by buying up works of new contemporary artists and appearing in the gallery social scene.
other collecting generation seizes the art­ist’s worth. The art industry urges young people to buy for personal enjoyment and not just a quick profit.
The lifestyle of today’s new collectors is not about ball gowns and expensive jewelry. It is all about walking around your home in sweat pants talking with a friend on the cell phone about the contem­porary art plastered on the walls that you look at and appreciate. It is about comput­ers, blackberry’s, ipods, and ibooks. Most of all, it is about texting your friends for the next social gathering at a Chelsea art gallery opening on Thursday evening.
Donna Clovis is an artist and finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Feature Writing