Amazing Art Stat of the Day: "Collectors" Art Isn't Reaching
Carter Cleveland of art startup Artsy claimed at an event last night that, "For every household that buys fine art in US, there are 37 households with the same average income that don't." So I asked him to elaborate.
Last night, Hyperallergic publisher Veken Gueyikian and I attended a panel at the General Assembly co-working space that had the nebulous title, “Art Outside the Gallery.” Carter Cleveland of art startup Art.sy was easily the most interesting speaker of the night and he lobbed out one stat that blew my mind:
For every household that buys fine art in US, there are 37 households with the same average income that don’t buy art.
I approached Cleveland after the event to ask about the source for the statistic and he was only too happy to explain. He said it was an internal stat they created based on the fact that the average household income of art collectors in the US is $350,000 and there are roughly 100–200,000 collectors. He elaborated that the biggest factor in whether someone buys art is their geographic proximity to art galleries.
In another part of his presentation last night he focused on the fact that Art.sy is interested in reaching those who don’t already buy art, not the ones that do.
I found it fascinating that the 350K household number is sure a far cry from the idea of millionaires and billionaires buying art like trinkets that the media and art world detractors like to promote.
Image via Gridskipper
