Jeff Magid is a New York, Los Angeles, and Mexico City–based art collector who plans to open Cuernavaca Tres, a public art foundation in Mexico City, in 2026. Find him on Instagram at @magideye.
Art sales are down, major galleries are closing. What caused this and what can be done? These are questions everyone has been asking over the past year. Recent press has blamed the global economy, whereas art world figures have blamed an influx of speculators, and the “financialization of art,” and suggested that the solution is for galleries to focus on just a few clients and turn collecting into a pure experience of “signaling access” “for the wealthy.” Others have argued this is just a normal market cycle and that there is no need for change—the status quo will be just fine.
But this isn’t an economic cycle problem or a financialization problem. It’s simple: There are more galleries, auctions, fairs, and artists than ever, but the number of buyers just isn’t keeping up. After decades of exclusion, opacity, and elitism, the art world urgently needs a stream of new buyers, and the luxury retail model isn’t bringing in enough people who want to be part of the elite club to keep them open. I’ve long wished that living with art were possible for more people. Now I know the future of the art world depends on it.
The recent history of galleries has increasingly mimicked the buy-a-product-to-be-part-of-an-elite-club logic of luxury retail. In the same way that Hermès might hope to have clients buy a bunch of other Hermès items before they are deemed worthy of a Birkin, galleries hope that new clients will buy into the gallery brand name to gain access, as well as the chance to move up the waitlist for the most desirable artworks. Meanwhile, there has been an arms race between galleries to expand to larger spaces and new locations. These costs often get passed on to buyers in the form of irrational primary price increases.
But art is not a luxury product. Fashion has the world’s best means of customer acquisition: vast marketing budgets and total cultural penetration. Art galleries have none of that. And yet these same galleries expect to drop a location in, say, Seoul and have people flock there like they would for Gucci. The obvious problem is that for a lot of those people seeking status-signaling objects, artworks just don’t work, because they have no visible branding: When you buy a Rolex from Rolex, it says Rolex; paintings from Gagosian are signed Koons or Saville. Besides, high-end art buyers don’t just want status-signaling experiences, they want great artworks. A great painting isn’t an empty sweatshop-made vessel for corporate logos, it’s an unbranded unique creation.
In his recent Business of Fashion column, former Art Basel director Marc Spiegler argued that instead of an elite, exclusive market, art should offer an elite, exclusive experience of status signaling, where “investment” is a dirty word and buyers purchase art more like they would a ticket to a VIP wellness retreat. I believe collecting is always about both love and value, and that an inclusive art market that welcomes more participants to truly value art is the only solution to the current slowdown.
Jeff Magid with Henry Taylor’s I Was King, When I Met The Queen — Syllable X’s Rhythm Equals Mumbo Jumbo, 2013, the first artwork he acquired, at the artist’s retrospective at MOCA, Los Angeles.
Photo Jeff Magid
When I started collecting around 2012, I was an outsider. I was in my 20s with no wealth, no inheritance, no mentor, and no connections. I got into collecting partly because I met artists who welcomed me. Then I was stubborn enough that it didn’t faze me when many in the gallery world treated me with varying degrees of dismissal and disdain: not important enough, not a real collector. When I’d walk into a gallery and ask the person at the desk for information, they’d often glance up at me then look away silently. When I finally got up the nerve to ask to buy at an art fair, everything was sold to a major collection, reserved for someone important. I didn’t know the right people, wasn’t from a known collecting lineage, couldn’t claim membership on a board or list masterpieces in my family collection. At first, I didn’t understand how few of us total outsiders there were, and by the time I did, I was too curious and obsessed to let it stop me.
Thirteen years later, here I am. I’ve made donations to 10 museums, supported dozens of galleries and artists, and built a decent collection. Recently I’ve also been sharing my unfiltered takes in writing and on social media, opening up my life in art so that more people know what’s behind the closed doors of art and how they can be part of it.
The art world has just as many barriers to entry as it did when I started out, and many people aren’t lucky enough to come through the door of knowing artists, like I did. I was recently at dinner with people in their 30s and 40s, all successful entrepreneurs worth seven figures. When the conversation turned to art, I was surprised to learn that although all of them visited museums and knew of famous artists, none of them thought they could afford to collect, or had any idea how to begin. Most people don’t know that gallery shows are free to the public; those who do often can’t find the prices or what’s for sale.
When outsiders do find their way in, they often don’t stick around after they’re made to feel unwelcome. Galleries continue to make any prospective buyers prove they’re worthy. A dealer once told me one of his artists asked him to vet every buyer, so he told her “I have a client with a multigenerational collection focused on diversity, and someone who works at an auction house,” and the artist immediately said “yes to the great collection, definitely no to the auctioneer,” not realizing it was the same person.
On Instagram, Magid speaks candidly about his experiences navigating the art world. From left, stills from his Reels showing paintings by Guercino, Hendrick Avercamp, and Caravaggio.
Courtesy Jeff Magid via Instagram (3)
The truth is, there’s no right reason to collect, like there’s no one way to be in love. But many prospective collectors become alienated when they’re told they’re in it for the wrong reasons. Spiegler wrote that “financialization” has “ravaged” the art market, and that the solution is to market art as an “instagrammable, sapiosexual pleasure for the wealthy.” I disagree with the idea that people buy art for one reason or the other: love or investment. People have always collected for some combination of love, expression, validation, insecurity, compulsion, investment, and whatever else. Only in art does challenging this false dichotomy come as a shock. No one asks Tom Brady whether he signed a contract for the love of football or of money. The obvious answer is, both.
In 1500s Europe only the “right people” could collect. That meant mostly popes and kings, dukes and countesses. The Dutch Golden Age was golden because suddenly merchants could collect too. The influx of buyers supported more working artists, many artists even became dealers. Some called new collectors crass and “in it for the wrong reasons.” But now we know that including more people led to a great moment in art history. The Roaring Twenties and booming ’80s are, in my view, two more periods where financial support, and yes, speculation from a new class of buyers enabled great art.
Magid during a visit to Sterling Ruby’s studio in Vernon, California.
Photo Jeff Magid
In a recent essay for e-flux, artist Andrea Fraser described the art world as containing many subfields, one of which is the art market. Whereas the public exhibition subfield is defined by experience, she writes, the art market is defined by value. I would say this is because a physical artwork is both the intellectual property of the creator, and an object that is a collectible, not an experience or a luxury product. The value isn’t just monetary, it’s what everyone who interacts with it values: the values of the artist imbued in the artwork, its artistic values and merits, and the values of those who support it, all of which help determine its societal and monetary value. Thus, as with any other collectible, it would be nonsensical to tell a buyer they should not think about value. By definition what it means to collect something is to value it.
Financial value is an aspect of value. By telling would-be buyers that “flippers” are “blacklisted,” while virtually every major collector sells art to refine their collections, we’re showing those would-be buyers that art is a walled-off world of deceit with rules only for outsiders. Dealer Tim Blum’s blaming (in part) financially minded collectors (when announcing in July that he was closing his gallery) while having recently sold his own Anna Weyant painting at auction is exemplary of this—but not uncommon. By telling new buyers they aren’t collectors if they think about financial value, we send the message that art is something you sink millions into but get none back. Unsurprisingly, that eliminates almost everyone.
“Collectors used to be less investment minded,” goes one popular nostalgic mindset. Sure, but there used to be fewer than 50 significant collectors. If you’d like a buyer pool consisting exclusively of genteel aristocrats who spend their days blowing millions without care, expect a return to the days of 50 collectors and five galleries. The same people who wax nostalgic in this way want their gallery to continue right alongside the thousands of others that have opened in the past 30 years. I hate to break it to them but we’re going to need more buyers, some of whom will want to know that, if you’re asking a hundred thousand dollars for an artwork, that artwork might retain some financial value.
Love Watts’s Jordan Watson discussing a painting by Umar Rashid in an exhibition organized with Magid at the Watts Empowerment Center, Los Angeles, 2020.
In the service of fixing what currently ails the art market, there is also something that artists can do in collaboration with their dealers: Make primary prices more affordable. This would go a long way toward building inclusivity. There needs to be art available at more price points. If the entry level for new paintings is $20,000, it’s hard for seasoned collectors to take chances, never mind for new ones to begin. I’ve heard artists say things like, “I’m showing six large paintings, I need to make them expensive in order to have a good quality of life in New York.” No one forced them to show only a few expensive paintings. Showing more types and sizes of work at attainable price points helps artists attract new collectors. Galleries could also benefit from doing shows with a selection of cheaper works simultaneous with traditional shows of an exclusive, expensive few.
I often say “great art for everybody,” and I really do mean everybody, not just those who can buy it. The art world needs more entry points, and involvement with museums and nonprofit organizations is one classic way. It’s part of the reason I’m a founding member of the Vanguard Council at the Met. Our goal is to bring in new leaders who will support the shows and help shape the future of the museum. And we should be urging our governments to support art, including public art. When Love Watts and I organized a show in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts, the young people who came were new to art and excited about becoming artists or working in art. If we want to expand who can be a part of art, we have to expand who sees it and where it’s shown.
As I share videos of my experiences in art, I’ve faced some of the same pushback from old guard art world elitists that I felt 13 years ago. For example, when I talked about how the shuttering of an art fair seemed like a sign that we needed more collectors not more fairs, several older gallerists I had never met showed up in the comments to tell me that I was ignorant and unqualified to speak because I wasn’t an expert on the history of that art fair. But I’ve also been amazed by the support I’ve received from so many other people, from critics, gallerists, and artists, to thousands of new art makers and lovers who were aware of the art world but never knew quite how they could access it. I’m meeting new people from all kinds of backgrounds who want to be part of the future of art. Will the art world welcome them?
A version of this article appears in the 2025 edition of the annual Top 200 Collectors issue, under the title “Open Door Policy.”
