Art as Investment: The Mei Moses® Fine Art Index

I’m often asked about my opinion of art as investment.  My opinion, whatever it is, is presumably clouded by my love for Picasso.  Better to direct such inquiries to the Mei Moses® Fine Art Index  (artasanasset.com), a statistical database and analysis compiled by two NYU economists.  Quite sensibly, they limit their statistics only to auctioned works (so that the facts of the sale are in the public domain and known beyond any doubt) and further limit their stats to those works that have sold at auction more than once.  That is, they compare only the prices achieved at auction for two or more sales of the same artwork.  The advantage is immediately evident: they’re comparing only like commodities.  More than […]

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Sidewalks of New York

  It’s springtime in New York, and Picassos, like bulbs, are flowering everywhere.  It was truly a pleasure to soak them in at the museums, the auctions, and also at Marlborough Gallery, which had staged an impressive print exhibit, including the masterpieces from the Nelson Blitz and Catherine Woodard collection.   It was also a relief that Giacometti was bloodlessly deposed, after his brief and inexplicable reign. Curiously, I found myself defending the Met’s exhibit, primarily from charges that the show was long on early works but short on the rest.  The NY Times was in the vanguard of this innuendo, but more than one of my friends followed its lead.  It seemed to me to say more about human nature—you

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