The Art Advisor: Ronald Varney
“What is most needed, perhaps, are more people to inspire philanthropy around a specific cause.”
5 QUESTIONS WITH Ronald Varney
President, Ronald Varney Fine Art Advisors
New York City
Ronald Varney has 30 years of experience in the international art market, working first at Sotheby's for twelve years before beginning his own specialist art advisory firm, Ronald Varney Fine Art Advisors, in 2002. He is especially skilled in serving the complex art-related needs of families and private collectors.
Starting his career in the art world in 1989 at Sotheby's New York, where he served initially as the Director of Marketing Development and was later a Senior Vice President in the Trusts and Estates Department. He wrote for numerous Sotheby's publications and also founded Sotheby's Books.
His objective in starting an independent art advisory firm was to be an advocate for private clients in navigating the challenges of an increasingly complex global art market.
Ronald has written widely on the arts for such publications as Esquire, the Smithsonian, House & Garden and The Harvard Business Review. He is a cum laude graduate of Amherst College, where he was an Independent Scholar in English. His personal collecting interests include rare books, drawings, photographs, English furniture and Japanese art.
1. Your newsletter is currently titled: “The Global Art Market Pauses”. What has been the greatest impact of this “pause”, and how do we best move from “pause” to “play”?
During a time of imposed reflection and reinvention, the art market has probably benefited most from taking a hard look at its business model. Cost and economizing in a time of crisis have driven many new developments and changes.
For example, the auction houses have long tried to get away from printing those expensive, gargantuan catalogues for their most important sales, especially as their clients now prefer digital versions. In the same vein, the houses have tried to lessen the number of live sales, with an auctioneer in the room and phone bidders and the like, when so many buyers now prefer to bid only online. The reality of the current market is that old ways of doing business are, in many cases, no longer relevant, especially to tech-savvy younger collectors.
And so we now see the “paused” art market making changes they might have put off implementing before the crisis, but now find of urgent importance. Museums, for example, have to imagine how to carry on in a new era in which blockbuster exhibitions that once brought in vast crowds and huge revenues will be gone for the foreseeable future. The Met, for example, has already announced that there will be no public events or tours for the rest of 2020.
For the time being, then, we are now in a “virtual art market,” with all participants reimagining their role and protocols going forward. It is worth adding that, despite the massive loss of revenue and jobs and opportunities, the art market has proved to be resilient and resourceful in adjusting, dwelling on the positive and beneficial aspects of this whole period of reinvention. As a result, all of the various players in the market have helped infuse it with a feeling of confidence and optimism for the days ahead.
How best to move from “pause” to “play?” Slowly and cautiously, of course. It will surely take the rest of this year for the gears of the art market to begin moving as before. The “play” button is about to be pushed by nearly every player of the art market, as cities reopen and people resume outdoor activity.
But, realistically, the art market will play in slow motion for the rest of 2020.
2. You have recently written about market trends after periods of turmoil. What short and long-term trends do you think will emerge?
In the past, since disruptions of the art market often occurred as a result of financial turmoil—such as in 1987 and 2008-2009—the short-term trends were most often about lowered expectations and belt tightening. Then, after a period of recovery, the art market carried on as before.
Now we have experienced a worldwide medical crisis that has stretched on for months. As it has forced a severe and devastating halt to the art market, I think the short-term trends emerging will be about rebranding and rebuilding.
For example, the art market has tried many ways of encouraging younger collectors through the years. Museums have trendy “Young Collectors Councils,” and art fairs and auction houses throw lavish parties for young professionals, even entertaining them with mock auctions to walk them through how to bid and buy. Even the Met’s Education Department came up with something called “Teens Take the Met,” in which the venerable institution was taken over by teenagers in a thrilling after-hours social invasion meant to make the place more inviting.
Every player in the art market has increasingly used Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms for marketing to a younger audience they might otherwise miss entirely through traditional means. Hence digital marketing—short and punchy—will increase and expand greatly in the coming months.
Also, the art market has become almost obsessed with luxury goods and aspirational lifestyles. Hence, collecting fields such as wine, watches, jewelry, handbags, 20th century design and cars have come front and center, pushing to the shadows the old and more traditional fields of collecting such as porcelain, silver, furniture and carpets. So in the short-term we will see an even greater effort by the art market to seem more hip, trendy and relevant to the younger generation.
As for the long term, the current crisis has made everyone skittish about Big Deals and Unlimited Expansion of the sort that have defined the art market in the past several years.
To refresh one’s memory, these have included the following: the rise of the mega-dealers and their gallery expansion worldwide along the lines of fast-food franchises; blockbuster Contemporary art sales that have pushed prices into the stratosphere; financial guarantees at auctions that have made art seem like a financial instrument for speculators; hype and promotion that have made the art market seem at times like a television mini-series; and museum expansionism worldwide that has now imperiled many institutions.
The art market today is perhaps like a famous artist, one who has enjoyed a spectacular run of success but has not forgotten about quality and high standards. This artist has just completed a painting only to find, on reflection, that it doesn’t work. The canvas is still good, of course, and so the artist simply paints it over and starts anew.
Perhaps that sort of repainting is the long term trend for the art market.
3. Do you think this crisis could shift the focus from a global market to a more local one?
Perhaps art fairs are the best example of globalization in the art market.
Many art dealers lament the loss of local patronage they once enjoyed, with collectors stopping by their gallery to see an exhibition, discussing a possible acquisition, seeking advice and generally being counseled and educated on art. It was an old-fashioned business model, very much a local one, a deeply personal one; and it changed completely with the advent of art fairs.
Now collectors could travel the world and see art being showcased by hundreds of dealers at glamorous and party-dense fairs like Frieze and Art Basel. Dealers—at least those who could afford the fairs—now benefitted from a vastly wider circle of clients, ones from all over the world. The intimate red-velvet viewing rooms of dealers in London and New York now became the crowded and fast-paced showrooms of the fairs, amidst an almost circus-like atmosphere of spectacle and flamboyance. For some fairs—like the majestic TEFAF held in Maastricht each winter—a dealer might ship nearly the entire inventory of the gallery to take advantage of the fair’s sale potential.
While the fairs have all been greatly affected by the crisis, as have the auction houses and everyone else in the art market, in due course they will recover and continue growing and evolving.
As a matter of history, the art market has been building, diversifying and deepening its influence for many decades now. Today it comprises a vast universe of players comprising auction houses, art dealers, art advisors, public museums, historical societies, legal and financial entities, philanthropies, private foundations, the art press, and of course private collectors in every conceivable area of interest. Powered by technology, this global giant will become more inclusive, multi-cultural and expansive.
Hence I don’t believe this trend of globalization will reverse itself.
4. You have written about wealth and legacy, and how they pertain to the art market. The market and nonprofit/philanthropic sides are both looking to better engage the next generation of patrons. How do we best do this in the current economic and public health reality?
Art has become increasingly important as a form of philanthropy. Perhaps the best example is the recent sale at Christie’s last year of the David Gilmour Collection of guitars. Gilmour, the longtime frontman for Pink Floyd and the owner of a large and valuable collection of electric guitars, many of which he had performed on in public for decades, decided to sell the collection to benefit a specific environmental charity. The sale stirred enormous worldwide interest, and the bidding was frenzied. The sale total was $21.5 million, all going to the charity.
I mention this because of the power of art to inspire giving. Hence in recent years we have seen an explosion of similar auctions meant not only to raise funds for philanthropic causes but, perhaps more importantly, to encourage similar giving by others. Indeed, sales like this are a powerful means of engaging the next generation of patrons, by example, and doing so around something they love—art.
As for inspiring more such giving in the current climate, I think that people are perhaps more aware than ever before of the value of giving. What is most needed, perhaps, are more people to inspire philanthropy around a specific cause. And they need not be rich or famous. One has only to think of Captain Tom Moore in England, walking around his garden 100 times to raise funds for the National Health Service, spurring an outpouring of generosity that yielded a staggering sum, over $35 million—all during the current crisis.
Years ago I was invited to speak at a national planned giving conference. Most of the attendees were from foundations and nonprofits throughout America, all eager to learn new ways of stirring donor interest and giving. I spoke about art as a largely untapped means of philanthropic giving, as so many wealthy individuals have an interest in the art market and the means to give works of art to charitable institutions.
And while the art market is just one means of stirring philanthropic giving, it seems a potent one.
5. I believe that making the case for relevancy is the cultural sector’s most urgent task. How does the sector best make the argument for its importance in a changing global landscape?
I have just written a newsletter about the artist Christo, who died recently at age 84, that begins with these words of his:
“All our projects are totally irrational, totally useless. Nobody needs them. The world can live without them.”
Of course, the millions of people around the world who had the good fortune to see and experience one of Christo’s “projects” through the decades would say that they were thrilled and inspired by the experience. Every project cast a spell, took people out of their daily slog and uplifted them around something beautiful and magical. The Gates in Central Park in 2005 is a fitting example.
Perhaps that is the relevancy, the importance, of art—the spell that is casts, however briefly and whatever the art form. And in a time when all the world is in agony on so many fronts, perhaps the fleeting joy of experiencing art is more relevant than ever before.
Ronald Varney has 30 years of experience in the international art market, working first at Sotheby's for twelve years before beginning his own specialist art advisory firm in 2002. He is especially skilled in serving the complex art-related needs of families and private collectors.
Ronald started his career in the art world in 1989 at Sotheby's New York, where he served initially as the Director of Marketing Development and was later a Senior Vice President in the Trusts and Estates Department. He wrote for numerous Sotheby's publications and also founded Sotheby's Books.
His objective in starting an independent art advisory firm was to be an advocate for private clients in navigating the challenges of an increasingly complex global art market.
Ronald has written widely on the arts for such publications as Esquire, the Smithsonian, House & Garden and The Harvard Business Review. He is a cum laude graduate of Amherst College, where he was an Independent Scholar in English. His personal collecting interests include rare books, drawings, photographs, English furniture and Japanese art.