Seems like my message didn’t go through 😵💫 I don’t think people are thinking, Oh nice museums and non-profits are taking care of the arts for me! If they are I think that’s a mistake. I think art as investment or as a tax haven are distractions that encourage the standards of art to be destroyed in order to allow larger and larger amounts of money to qualify for such benefits, so that’s an incentive problem. Ultimately I just don’t think the collecting culture is ambitious enough and willing to stick its neck out and go for greatness despite the risks. There are a lot of risks, but there is also potential for raising the bar and rewriting art history such that the works that you sponsor could become the new benchmark for quality.
Discussion
It does seem consistent with https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ in that the aspirations of great collectors fell off a cliff in the past 50 years. What I mean by that is that there used to be collectors who spent their entire lives chasing after the highest quality art they could find in the world, and their entire existence was built around this goal. The motivation to want to do that seems to be missing, not the money. Of course the right motivated people need to have the money, but they can opt-in now with Bitcoin and get to where they need to be financially.
And then you also have to find the living artists who are motivated by creating the highest quality art in the world! Some people are content just to make a living, others just to become famous. It seems to be a very small group that is truly chasing after greatness, both on the artist side and the collector/patron side. They recognize that there are artworks in museums that are higher quality than all the rest, and they insist on surpassing them if it’s the last thing they do.