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| Young collectors visit The Affordable Art Fair |
Affordable Art Fair
Founded in London in 1999, The Affordable Art Fair provides a place for people to buy contemporary original art in a friendly and welcoming environment. Affordable Art Fairs are held in cities around the world and showcase works priced from $100 to $10,000. (Three-quarters of the works shown are under $5,000.) In addition to exhibitions of art, the events feature workshops and demonstrations where you can learn more about art and meet artists and experts. The “Art-Buying Guide” on the Affordable Art Fair website provides advice for visiting an art fair, starting a collection, hanging your art, and understanding the distinction between original prints, reproductions, and editions.
AIC: American Institute for Conservation of Artistic and Historic Works
Although this site is primarily geared toward professional conservators, the website includes a page on how to care for your personal treasures. It includes links to instructions for caring for paintings, photographs, works on paper, glass and ceramics, and more.
ArtBusiness.com
This site is run by Alan Bamberger, an art consultant, advisor, and independent appraiser. He has been selling art since 1979 and consulting for artists, galleries, businesses, organizations, and collectors since 1985. He has authored a book, “The Art of Buying Art” and has posted dozens of articles for collectors. Some of his newest articles include “Common Misconceptions Collectors Have About Art Galleries and Buying Art” and “How to Buy Art Directly from Artists”
Art-Collecting.com
Founded by former gallery owner Dan Fear, this website provides resources for buying, selling, collecting, and marketing visual fine art. In addition to helping collectors, the website strives to help artists and galleries from the traditional art world succeed on the Internet.
In the art-gallery guide, you can find listings and website links for more than 4,000 fine-art galleries in cities throughout the U.S. The guide also provides state-by-state listings of art museums, art centers, and non-profit art organizations. If there is a specific type of you are interested in collecting, you can use their “Types of Collecting” section to find links to galleries that specialize in that type of art (e.g. African Art, American Crafts, Ceramic Art, Fine Art Photography, Historical American Art, and Western Art).
Artfacts.net
Artfacts.Net™ is a comprehensive, unbiased, online database about modern and contemporary art. It provides verified and up-to-date information about artists, exhibitions, private galleries and public institutions and art fairs. The site’s analytical section includes an “Artists Ranking” tool and a career analyzer that can help you visualize an artist’s exhibition and auction history. All content on Artfacts.net can be accessed through a personal membership.
ArtInfo.com
This website is a great place to learn about what’s currently happening in the world of art. It offers breaking news, profiles of top and emerging artists, stories about collectors and collecting, gallery round-ups from around the world, the best of student art, market trends and analysis, and detailed coverage of art fairs. A daily email newsletter helps art enthusiasts keep up with the market.
Art Price Index
With more than 2 million members, Artprice.com provides a marketplace through which buyers, sellers, and insurers can connect and research the auction prices of specific works created from 1700 to the present day by more than 500,000 artists. Artprice Images is a unique library of 108 million images and prints of artworks at auctions from 4,500 auction houses worldwide.
Art San Diego Online
Art San Diego is a four-day contemporary art fair. To continue the experience of the physical fair year round, the organizers recently announced ART SD ONLINE. The website will feature monthly exhibitions with select works from participating exhibitors, as well as articles about collecting, and news items about art world events and happenings. The Collectors Resource Group affiliated with the Art San Diego fair includes numerous art-service professionals who can assist collectors with questions about appraisals, insurance, framing, and shipping.
Art Source
EBSCO Publishing has created a comprehensive Art Source™ database that libraries can make available to their users. Art Source includes full text from over 600 high-quality journals and 230 books on a broad range of subjects from fine, decorative and commercial art to various areas of architecture and architectural design. The database also offers podcasts from leading museums on artists and individual works of art, a collection of over 63,000 images, and art-reproduction records.
Artsy
Artsy is an online platform for discovering and collecting art. See more than 30,000 artworks by more than 6,000 artists from 400+ galleries and 100+ museums, private collections, foundations, and artists’ estates. Thanks to Artsy’s Art Genome Project, you can explore art by style, subject matter, medium, technique, or region. For example, when you hit the term “collage,” you will see a definition of the term and more than 1,200 examples of collages by various artists. Choose “sort by year” to see how collage styles have evolved from 1913 to the present. Use the Art Genome Project for self-guided learning or to find works for sale. The Artsy blog features easy-to-read posts about artists, their projects, and various exhibitions.
Artspace: Art 101
Artspace is a digital marketplace for fine art and design. In partnerships with galleries, they sell limited editions and original works from rising stars to the most recognized artists. Part of the Artspace mission is act as an online art advisor and “to help collectors and aspiring collectors discover, learn about and collect fine art.” They publish dozens of feature articles and interviews with artists, advisors, and collectors.
For example, their “Art 101” page contains a variety of useful features such as:
Everything You Need to Know about Art Fairs (But Were Afraid to Ask)
A Beginner’s Guide to Art Auctions
An Introduction to New Media Art
Google Art Project
Study 30,000+ works of art from more than 150 collections in over 40 nations. Examine works at brushstroke-level detail, take virtual tours of museums around the world, and build world-class virtual collections without spending a dime. Expertly narrated videos, audio guides, and viewing notes make it easy for you to learn more about the paintings, drawings, sculptures, historic artifacts, and photographs in the museum collections. Using Google’s online tools, you can create and share virtual art collections that would be impossible to match in real life.
Junkyard Arts
This irreverent website strives to break down alienating, convoluting “art-speak” for the advancement of art education and appreciation. They define their mission as bringing “the ever-exclusive world of the arts to the masses through criticism of current art culture, emergent artist interviews, museum and gallery exhibit reviews, and affordable fine-art and opinion pieces.
The SmART Collector
Sponsored by the San Diego Visual Arts Network, this site offers a wealth of advice on how to demystify the art collecting process. You will find tips on the tax implications of collecting, how to spot fakes and forgeries, insuring your art, and buying art at auctions and art fairs. Even though a lot of the information is geared toward San Diego-area collectors, there is plenty of practical advice for anyone who wants to understand how to get started.
Wikilitho
Wikilitho lists art buyers and dealers who have been identified as dealing in fraudulent or illegitimate pieces of art. They also allow buyers to authenticate any artwork they are considering purchasing and register original paintings, lithographs, and sculptures. The blog includes articles such as “The Importance of Provenance and Authentication” and “The Highs and Lows of Investing in Art: Six Tips You Need to Read.”
PUBLICATIONS
American Art Review Magazine
For art connoisseurs (and those who want to be connoisseurs) American Art Review chronicles the emergence and growth of American painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture and decorative arts. Sources include museums, galleries, archives, universities, private collections, families, and friends of the artists.
Book: The Art of Buying Art
In this book, art consultant Alan Bamberger walks you through the four phases of purchasing art: define, select, research, and buy. Bamberger advises novices to buy their first works from reputable galleries where you can receive personal attention and guarantees that are hard to get from other sources. Once you broaden your knowledge, you can feel more comfortable buying from other sources such as online galleries, estate sales, auctions, and directly from artists.
Topics covered in the book include how to research and evaluate art prices like professional dealers and appraisers do, how to focus your art collecting, how to spot fakes and forgeries, how to buy art at online auctions, how to negotiate for art, how to buy fixed-price art online, and how to tell the difference between an original and reproduction.
