When Money’$ Not Enough
About a decade ago, with the economy beginning to recover following the global financial meltdown, a budding art collector flew from New York to Art Basel Miami Beach to buy a painting. “In my head I was the dream person, the up-and-coming collector that they want,” he recalls. “I was a decent-sized collector but not well-known. Not a banker who wants to flip. Someone who would buy as a long-term investment.”
An admirer of the hyper-realist artist Karel Funk, the collector, armed with a budget of $400,000, inquired at the 303 Gallery booth about buying one of Funk’s signature hooded-anorak paintings, then priced around $40,000, “but of course there was no price on display,” he says. The gallerist’s curt response: “There are some in the Whitney you can go and look at.” Recalling the dismissal today, he says, “I now know that most of the art is spoken for before the fair and that it’s a game that it’s open to the public to buy.”
The gatekeepers of the high-powered contemporary art scene are an elite unit whose mission, it seems, is to deter the general public. Of course, this zealous exclusivity is not confined to the world of art. Across many categories of luxury objects or experiences, access to the most hotly contested trophies is restricted to a select few, and the conditions of entry are about more than money. You cannot walk into a Rolex dealership, a Chelsea power gallery or an Hermès boutique, ask for a Daytona, a Jeff Koons or a Birkin and expect to be allowed to buy it.
The shop where nothing is for sale may sound apocryphal, but it is in reality a well-established marketing strategy. “The notion of scarcity is a really fundamental principle in psychology,” says Kit Yarrow, PhD,
