With a world in crisis and an art market spinning out of control, ace art-world consultants Chen & Lampert deliver a quiz full of hard choices for Art in America readers from far and wide.
Your deep pockets, social connections, and discerning eye for new talent have resulted in a museum-quality freeport filled with some of the finest works made by young artists during the last decade. Now that their careers have matured, it may be time to see if your investments have as well. Answer these questions to find out if it is time to auction off select works or keep everything safely crated for future liquidation.
1. Your taste in art is:
a) Encyclopedic
b) Eclectic
c) Egregious
2. Other collectors speculate, but you:
a) Appreciate
b) Support
c) Horde
3. The first paintings to go to the auction blocks are:
a) Zombie Abstractions
b) French Impressionists
c) Your kid’s art that got miscataloged as a Mark Grotjahn
4. The one painting you’d never part with is a:
a) Nude of your current wife
b) Nude of your most cherished mistress
c) Nude of yourself
5. Auction commissions make you feel:
a) Resigned
b) Extorted
c) Homicidal
6. When a rival collector buys one of your pieces it makes you feel:
a) Validated
b) Regretful
c) Richer than them now that you have their money
7. Proceeds from the sale will go toward paying for your:
a) First wife’s buccal fat removal
b) Second wife’s Brazilian butt lift
c) Mistress’s bazookas
8. When a young artist pleads with you not to sell their work you respond:
a) “Sorry, it’s mine now and I can do whatever I want with it.”
b) “Sorry, I don’t want to damage your career, so the sale is off.”
c) “Sorry that I was forced to release the hounds, but you are trespassing on private property!”
9. When a museum director asks you to donate a major work you respond:
a) “Is there a particular size or color that you are interested in? I have them all.”
b) “Major, you say? There’s a saucy nude in the boudoir that you must see…”
c) “Sorry that I was forced to release the hounds, but you are trespassing on private property!”
10. In the end, the reason you are selling is so that:
a) You can focus on philanthropy
b) Your current wife doesn’t get the art in your upcoming divorce
c) You can turn your humble tax shelter into an opulent tax haven
SCORES
10–16:
Instead of bringing artworks from your collection to auction, you arrange for Vinny from the local pizzeria to pay a visit to your storage. Unfortunately, it might be the case that the whole joint catches on fire from an electrical problem that engulfs the building and all the art goes up in flames. If that were to happen, you would thank your lucky stars and publicly mourn the loss of so many fully insured cultural treasures.
17–23:
Screw auction houses! You get the idea to make NFTs, T-shirts, and figurines from the art you own and sell them to hype collectors at Burning Man. Then you invite Alec Monopoly to paint over the original art with his trademark characters and offload all the work to a libertarian tech bro for crypto, a full-body cryo chamber, and a gas-powered Tesla Cybertruck. To the moon!
24–30:
The weird thing is that you might actually like art, or even love it. Parting with a cherished painting hurts as much as losing a partner or making a nondeductible donation. Don’t cheat on your heart by dumping spurned works in the cruel marketplace. Hang on for now, you may need them to erect your true passion project: a museum with your name on it.
