It has now been many years since the art market it was the composition and synthesis of the actors of the art system, galleries, critics, dealers, fairs, merchants, auction houses. Then slowly the lion's share remained above all the auction houses, followed by the large international galleries and specialized and noble fairs, preferably in Basel, Paris, London, Dubai or Miami. In the background the consultants – i.e. the art adviser – and the attorneys scattered around the world and hunting for “masterpieces” for an institutional client or art investment funds.
Even the art section for banks is better if "private” skin is shedding, art advisory no longer presents itself as a pure customer loyalty service – let's say just to give a complete service – but something more “composed”. It has been realized that with the new platforms that are used to manage a client's assets, perhaps it would be useful to also include the artistic one and maybe even get to the real estate one. For now, the comparison is still linked to the databases provided by Artprice or Artnet.
At the same time, the already existing structures are already very functional – see Banca Aletti – which for years has been dealing with great professionalism in following any customer who shows an interest in art, enhancing what they own or optimizing an investment chosen out of “passion”.
An excellent reflection in this regard can be found in the volume "L'Art Advisory nel Private Banking" edited by Mariacristina Ragazzoni and Bruno Zanaboni (AIPB editor), by the way we read that «Art can represent a valid investment option for those who want to diversify their portfolio and contain the risk, while cultivating a passion or a collecting attitude and satisfying a pleasure and an aesthetic taste not necessarily linked to the profit dimension» (A. Guerrini).
This work presents the world of banking art advisory in its entirety and therefore the complex of operators and professionals who contribute to making this constantly evolving sector unique. The main private banks that offer this service tell their model firsthand in order to enhance an asset that is often not associated with a good investment. This all-encompassing handbook intends to disprove this common belief by bringing together the whole community of specialists who operate in the art market and who analyze with their own experience all phases of the art investment life cycle, from acquisition to transmission, to regulatory and tax profiles. There is also a series of testimonials, insights and market research that make this work unique and rich in content”.
Now, in order to have the right picture of the moment, it is useful to make a distinction between the Italian and international "art" scenario, as today with the economic-financial crisis it has led people to invest in a different way, much more careful and preferring (in primis) international modern and contemporary art. In this segment, and with the previous considerations, trading and investing has become much faster than before, but this involves greater attention to risk. While for ancient art the long-term risks are lower. We can therefore say that the crisis is favoring contemporary art to the detriment of ancient art, which however finds a greater place – also as a balancing factor – in investment funds with a diversified portfolio.
This tendency to prefer contemporary art allows the advisor to place the investment on a par with the financial one, because it will no longer be a question of a loyalty service as it was before, but a real asset to be managed with same attention as the financial ones, only with methodologies and different forms of evaluation. And probably everything, within a single IT platform, which will allow you to sell or buy in real time. I do not exclude that there may be – even in the short term – other complementary online support services. He says about it Alessandro Minello, Ca' Foscari University/EconLab “The art market enters the big data era, where it is possible to experiment with advanced algorithms for integrating data and information referring to a much more complex reality”.
Here then is the importance that all this will need even more the support of Art Advisors capable of translating their artistic and professional knowledge, intersecting data and indices with emotional or social factors, which in any case will always influence the world of the art market.
In this regard, a new start-up has already been launched which is working in this sense, which involves the creation of a financial analysis tool for the world of Art Advisory ... but for IT security only the name "ArtLAB" is known, the rest is still all top secret.
