Business

Thomas Eller and Hans Neuendorf, video still from VernissageTV

I just watched a video interview of Artnet founder and CEO Hans Neuendorf and Thomas Eller, the Editor-in-Chief of Artnet Magazine, on VernissageTV. The biggest story I found in the interview was the discussion of Artnet planning to launch an online art auction platform, a kind of eBay for the art world. The reason this would be a big deal for the auction houses, should they pull it off, is that they are talking about commissions in the 5-10% range. Neuendorf suggested that artists might use it, not just collectors and dealers.

Other highlights:

• Hans Neuendorf is very interested in the idea of market transparency, so that artists, dealers, and collectors have a better idea of how certain artists and works are really being priced.
• The importance of online platforms for art, since there are a large number of artists without access to the market. In an age with very high real estate prices, galleries can’t afford to rent more space to show more artists and works even if they wish to.
• Liquidity is a problem for the art market – galleries with big inventories have significantly more financial risk than auction houses.
• At least 40,000 artists graduating from art schools in USA each year.

I also like this point (paraphrasing): “There are easier ways to make money than being an art dealer, despite all the talk of money — they’re idealists.”

I just launched the first gallery client outside of the U.S., Galerie Open in Berlin. They are also one of the most customized sites.

Like a lot of busy tech types, I use RSS feeds to keep up with a lot of sites. What’s RSS you ask? FeedBurner has a good explanation. Basically they are feeds published by a website that can be read by an external website or program. I use feeds to keep up with blogs and news sites so that I see when they have new items without having to actually visit the 100 different websites I’m tracking. My favorite applications for tracking RSS feeds are

• BlogLines (website)
• Google Reader (website)
• NetNewsWire Lite (OSX)

My webhosting service for artists and galleries, ArtCat, automatically generates RSS feeds for my clients so that it’s easy for me to see when galleries have news or have added exhibitions, or when artists have new works and news items. Until ArtCat, I had never seen a gallery other than sixspace with a feed. It appears that sites running the exhibit-E software now are capable of generating RSS feeds if they wish. I first noticed this when visiting the Gagosian site to look at information on the Warhol shows.

I would like to think that ArtCat and ArtCal (which has several feeds) helped start this trend, but I doubt anyone’s likely to say so out loud.

While we’re on the subject of websites, what’s the deal with big name galleries that don’t have websites? I know they want to keep things “personal” for their collectors, but it really interferes with the ability of the less fortunate to get information on their artists and exhibitions. Marianne Boesky Gallery has a new building, but no website at the moment? Cohan and Leslie has taken down their old site and now there is just a placeholder. It’s amazing to me that galleries don’t work on a site at a temporary URL while keeping their old site up. It’s not that hard. When galleries move their sites to ArtCat, they work on a temporary site until they have brought enough information over to launch. We don’t relaunch with a blank site that says “coming soon.”