{"id":36087,"date":"2025-10-22T11:11:54","date_gmt":"2025-10-22T11:11:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/buying-your-first-big-piece-of-art-can-be-intimidating-heres-how-a-citi-art-advisor-recommends-you-do-it\/"},"modified":"2025-10-22T11:11:54","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T11:11:54","slug":"buying-your-first-big-piece-of-art-can-be-intimidating-heres-how-a-citi-art-advisor-recommends-you-do-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/buying-your-first-big-piece-of-art-can-be-intimidating-heres-how-a-citi-art-advisor-recommends-you-do-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Buying your first big piece of art can be intimidating. Here&#8217;s how a Citi art advisor recommends you do it."},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/68f7dfb85dbc4fd10dab42b8?format=jpeg\" alt=\"Gallery assistants at Sotheby&#039;s Frieze week exhibitions\"\/><figcaption>Rebekah Bowling suggested visiting a range of venues when entering the art world.<\/p>\n<p>credit should read Wiktor Szymanowicz\/Future Publishing via Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<ul>\n<li>Rebekah Bowling helps advise ultra-high-net-worth clients on their art collections.<\/li>\n<li>She said visiting &quot;incubator galleries&quot; and a range of venues can help get over the initial hump.<\/li>\n<li>Transactions at the lower end of the art market boomed last year.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Walking into a gallery as an art world newbie is likely to be a somewhat humbling experience.<\/p>\n<p>Rebekah Bowling, a senior art advisor at Citi who works with ultra-high-net-worth clients in Citi Wealth to manage and build their art collections, knows that it can be &quot;really intimidating&quot; to start buying art. Galleries typically don&#039;t list prices, and new buyers often don&#039;t know much about the artists or shows they&#039;re looking at, she said.<\/p>\n<p>Even asking an employee at the desk about the works on display takes some courage.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;They, in turn, say, &#039;Let me get a director,&#039; or, &#039;Are you a collector? Can you share a few details about your collection?&#039;&quot; Bowling said. &quot;There&#039;s this vetting that happens at the front door. If you are not a known entity, there&#039;s the idea that you&#039;re not going to get treated as kindly.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Sales in the global art market fell 12% last year, totaling around $57.5 billion, according to Art Basel and UBS&#039; Art Market Report. Despite the drop, the number of transactions increased by 3%, mainly because of sales in the lower tier of the market.<\/p>\n<p>For those trying to get over the many humps and buy art for the first time, Bowling had a few pieces of advice.<\/p>\n<h2>Educate yourself<\/h2>\n<p>&quot;Education is the first point,&quot; Bowling said. She suggests that anyone seriously interested in starting a collection spend at least six months, or even a year, educating themselves on the market and their own taste. It&#039;s essential to become familiar with both the primary and secondary markets, which respectively sell pieces for the first time and as resales, she said.<\/p>\n<p>And though art can be a good investment \u2014 Morgan Stanley estimated 4.9% annualized returns on art and collectibles over a 20-year period in a report from earlier this year \u2014 Bowling doesn&#039;t think buying pieces only for potential profit is a smart strategy.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;If you&#039;re buying it for purely speculative reasons, hoping to hold it for a year or two and then flip it for a higher price, I think you will only be disappointed,&quot; she said. Bowling advises people to only buy pieces they genuinely love.<\/p>\n<h2>Visit a range of venues<\/h2>\n<p>Beyond galleries, Bowling said that auctions and art fairs can be &quot;more welcoming&quot; environments. Auctions often list price estimations and a few details about the artist, which can make the buying process less opaque. Art fairs offer new collectors an opportunity to explore a lot of work at once and &quot;immediately see what they gravitate towards,&quot; Bowling said.<\/p>\n<p>The Art Basel and UBS report found that the total value of sales at auctions fell by 20% to $23.4 billion in 2024. That said, the number of transactions grew 4%, spurred by growth at the low end, or pieces sold for less than $50,000.<\/p>\n<h2>Focus on emerging artists<\/h2>\n<p>Though some might only associate the art market with the Picassos and Matisses of the world, Bowling said emerging artists are a great place to start a collection, since their work tends to be less expensive. She advises visiting what she calls &quot;incubator galleries,&quot; which might be located in neighborhoods like the Lower East Side of Manhattan, the East Side of London, or the East Side of LA.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;They&#039;re giving them their first, second, third, solo shows, focusing on showing this work to institutions, to curators, to tastemakers within the business,&quot; Bowling said. Typically, these galleries are good at keeping prices low initially.<\/p>\n<p>Once a collector builds a relationship with a gallery, the gallerist will likely start keeping them up to date on new shows.<\/p>\n<p>Read the original article on Business Insider<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rebekah Bowling suggested visiting a range of venues when entering the art world. credit should read Wiktor Szymanowicz\/Future Publishing via Getty Images Rebekah Bowling helps advise ultra-high-net-worth clients on their art collections. She said visiting &quot;incubator galleries&quot; and a range of venues can help get over the initial hump. Transactions at the lower end of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36088,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-36087","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36087"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36087\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}