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How The Internet is Changing The Way Fine Art is Bought and Sold

How The Internet is Changing The Way Fine Art is Bought and Sold

2012-09-09
Source: Wired

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Five years ago yesterday, Jen Bekman founded 20×200 on the belief that everyone should be able to collect art, and that the internet could help them do so. While neither the oldest nor the biggest place to buy prints online (art.com has been peddling prints for over a decade), her curated site, along with several other upstarts, represent a rapidly changing attitude and approach towards how art is marketed, bought and sold, a domain that Bekman says has lagged behind in its adoption of online retailing.

“Art as a business category remains one of the few industries that has largely been undisrupted by technology,” says Bekman. “Now, a lot more people are comfortable both collecting art in general and also collecting art online, because of what we’ve done over the last several years.”

Selling carefully selected prints at standardized prices — $24 for an 8×10, $1,200 for a 24×30, etc. — and introducing art to consumers who are new to the scene not only helped 20×200 push the industry, it helped the site grow at a respectable pace. It now has venture funding and almost 20 employees.

“We want everyone to buy art, that’s sort of been the mission of the business since the start,” she says......





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