March 13: Art Market Dynamics with Isabel Causadias

By Nora Bergman

Seated in Ruben Torres Gallery, we had the opportunity to hear about the art market and dealing from 2 very different perspectives of the business — one from the gallerist’s perspective, and one from a researcher’s bigger picture perspective. Isabel’s talk highlighted a number of misconceptions in and about the industry, and pushed back against them. First she commented that media is not the launch pad it used to be, despite it being more accessible than ever before. She noted that where print media used to be a pulse of the art world, it seemed that social media would be a stronger, faster avenue. Instead, though, she feels that the mass of media has diluted things, and in fact returned us to an awareness that the most important network is achieved by actually showing up. She also talked about the efficacy of looking at the art market on an international scale, which at first seems like it could be a key to success, finding overarching rules and trends. Instead, in her research she found that trying to make international equivalencies or find hard and fast rules was not so effective. She found that each city’s market had such a unique identity that one would be much better off really learning one than trying to generalize them all. This conversation came up as she discussed her research, which brought up another misconception — that data is king. She noted that the data was exclusive to only the top price point tier of galleries, which gave such a limited picture of the scene. In a business minded world, one would think that data could offer insight into an amorphous industry, but instead, in this case, it could lead you astray, or at least paint a very limited picture. At the end of the day, it really is all about showing up and getting to know the local community at the heart of the market!