How You Can Start Collecting Art: A Beginner’s Guide

Alya Khemji
3 min readMay 28, 2018

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You have always wanted to become an art collector because you love art but don’t know where to start from or what it involves. You are not alone, there are various other art lovers who wish to collect works of art but they just don’t know where to start from. Fortunately, you are in the right place because in this article, you are going to learn how a novice art collector can successfully begin the journey successfully.

Below we take you through some useful tips that you can follow to successfully collect works of art.

You ought to have a plan

There is usually an immense amount of artwork available in the market which can be quite overwhelming to a new art collector. It doesn’t matter where you are going to start collecting the art, be it online, in galleries, or at art fairs it gets quite complicated. You go about this by deciding early enough on the art medium, its price, and also the dimensions of the space available for you that you will place it in. This will help you go for only those pieces of art work that meet your preferred criteria.

To help you start establishing your personal style, it may be best if you go through art history books to learn about the different mediums first. Doing so will help you get attracted to a certain medium over others.

Be guided by the budget you have

People usually make a big mistake by thinking that pieces of artwork that are low priced are not real artworks. This where they go wrong, there are pieces that sell affordably but in real sense are just great works of art by upcoming artists who have not become expensive. Please note that there usually lots of overvalued art pieces out there in the markets. This doesn’t make them highly valuable.

You simply need to go for those pieces that are good quality but are within your budget don’t overstretch yourself. It is usually best to do some research to understand why some art pieces are highly priced to understand the reason why. Checking out a profile of an artist for instance may help you find out about the galleries that have represented an artist and the shows the artist has participated in. You can then compare the cost of artwork pieces of other artists that have similar qualifications as the artist you wish to buy his collections to know the market price.

Get involved in art

If you want to be a good art collector then getting involved in art by visiting art galleries, art fairs, and studios to meet artists will help you. The more you get yourself involved in art, the more you will learn about works of art that are good and those that you don’t have taste for.

If you don’t understand ask to know

If you are not sure about artwork piece that excites you why not ask questions about the artist behind it? You can ask the gallery where that piece of artwork about the background of the artist behind it. You may also ask the gallery why they decided to represent an artist for instance. This may help you find out about the worth of the piece you want to collect.

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Alya Khemji
Alya Khemji

Written by Alya Khemji

Digital Marketing Expert Dubai

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