Why Art Needs Private Collectors

It’s easy to dismiss art collecting as a fruitless, lonely endeavor: you purchase the art, you hold it in your possession, and you look at it sometimes. It’s likewise easy to dismiss art collecting as a game for the uber-rich who have nothing better to do. But that’s not all of what collecting art can do: in addition to brightening the home, learning how to collect art sharpens the mind, promotes cultural awareness, and preserves history. People who know how to find and buy art aren’t just taking for themselves. They’re ensuring that art stays alive, and lots of people are doing it right.

Art isn’t just something you have. It’s something you experience, something you live, because you are different every time you see it, and with every new view the art compounds and becomes something more than what it was. Art collector and entrepreneur Jen Bekman understands this better than anyone. She also understands that collecting art isn’t easy for many people. In an effort to make the art of art collecting more accessible, Bekman founded 20×200, a startup that creates museum-quality prints of artworks and sells them inexpensively.

“Most people, their experience of art is in museums because galleries are in many ways intimidating,” Bekman says: “People are surprised that it’s really simple human emotion and connection that drives engagement with a piece.”

A girl stands in front of a piece of art, admiring it

For many people, collecting art fills a kind of spiritual void, gives them something they did not know they were missing. Art, in all its many forms, reminds us how to be human. Collecting it connects us to each other and helps us understand others’ cultures. San Francisco financier Thom Weisel has spent much of his life collecting Native art from the American Southwest, and now he’s donating 200 of those pieces to Bay Area art galleries.

When the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art reopens later this year, three of its galleries will be named after him for his dedication to the preservation of Native art and for the generous gift it made for the museum, ensuring that more and more people will have access to art.

Art needs its private collectors if it’s to survive. It’s individual art collectors who are responsible for the market’s preservation and for driving it forward. We need people like Bekman and Weisel who are working to ensure art’s accessibility and longevity. Without them, we are without stories or connection.

Sculptures at the Walker Art Gallery.=

“The art that I live with in my home makes my life richer,” Bekman says. “I really want art collecting to be a much more mainstream pastime than it is.”

Guest Author Bio

Agnes Flores I am a San Franciscan, art student, dog lover, night owl, and highly unwilling barista.