Art Galleries Are Still Not OK—Now What? With Marc Spiegler & Amy Cappellazzo

You might have seen a piece in the New York Times last month titled "Art Goweries are Not Okay." Well, we're here today with its author, Mark Speakler, about how it landed, and to unpack it with Amy Capelazzo. What you're about to hear is not a complete session, is three people who have spent their careers inside this business are going about what's actually broken, and more importantly, when anyone can do about it. In the three of us, there's over 100 years in the business department, so let's get into it. This episode is brought to you by Ursula, a magazine of contemporary culture by Azurem Worth. Welcome to the Barefax podcast. We're joined by two multifaceted, very willing to speak their mind, guess this morning. They interest me because they've had a multitude of different vantage points in their careers in the art world, so first we're joined by Amy Capelazzo, two P's, two L's, two Z's. I always have to remind myself, who's worked in the nonprofit world. She's worked in the auction world, and now she's working in the advisory world. And Mark Speakler, the former CEO of Art Basel, who worked as a journalist, so coming from the evil side, and now we'll explain a little bit of all the things that he's doing since he's left Art Basel, but before we get into that, obviously Mark caused a big stir right around the opening of Art Basel last month with his article in The New York Times. Art galleries are not okay, Amy, what do you think of that? Well, I applaud Mark for writing it, and I applaud The New York Times for being interested in publishing it, so that's all good. I love it when the art market, which we know to be a relatively small market, gets, you know, outsized airtime and visibility because it's such an interesting market. So I applaud that for sure. I mean, I agree that the gallery model is probably a kind of inflection point or turning point, and it's always been a high-risk, high-reward kind of business, and it's a business. And I think sometimes the art world can apply a not-for-profit mentality on something that feels good, but if it's built as a business, then it has to function as a business in order to thrive and succeed. So while galleries are indeed in a kind of crisis because of our time, it's not because of malfeasance or wrongdoing or regulation, or so it's just sort of like changing forces of capital technology to some degree, global politics, this is just what's happening. The gallery space is really iterating rather than dissolving or anything like that. When you read the headline, did you immediately go, "That's correct," or were you like, "Well, tell me more." Well, I thought, you know, like all headlines, it's only part of the story. It's usually a bit charged and sensational for purposes of capturing an audience, so I read the headline and quickly wanted to continue reading on, so the headline was effective in grabbing my attention, of course, but I thought it was just part of the narrative. Mark, the writers don't always write their headline, but did you end this case? And the follow-up to that is, I'm sure you got a lot of feedback from it, not all positive. What did you take away from the public's response? So Josh, I'll take those in order. First of all, thanks again for inviting us. We've had many great conversations for never in public, so I'm really looking forward to this. Of course, writers do not get to choose their headlines. This was actually a headline that was extracted from a sentence that was in part of the piece that had been edited out, so it's legitimately something that I believe. I think it's accurate. I didn't have a problem with it. You know, there could have been a much more sensationalist headlines for that piece. The headline was, "Art galleries are not okay." The piece for those who didn't read it, basically, details the ways in which our galleries are not okay and the difficult conditions that they face. Before I get to the reactions, which were very interesting and completely expected in some ways, I think it's important to say that on the one hand, part of the piece details, the ways in which our current condition, as Amy just pointed out, creates a lot of problems for our galleries. The generational wealth shift, which creates a completely different dynamic around the new collectors people are trying to attract, the difficulties of shipping things internationally, care of issues, et cetera, et cetera. But I think, and I really want to dig into this a little bit deeper if our hosts will allow us, that the problem goes further back. The reality is this, that in the last 15 to 20 years, the number of multi-millionaires and billionaires, meaning the target audience for the art market, has expanded enormously. The art world has expanded enormously, where it's now present at scale with intensity in the Middle East, in Asia, in Africa and Latin America in a way that it wasn't 25 years ago. Yet, by all reasonable estimates, the art market itself did not grow at a time when luxury, which is the closest adjacent market in terms of its promotional tactics and in terms of its audience, did grow enormously. I actually think the current conditions are the stress test, but the problem goes much further back. I mean, in terms of the reactions, I have to be very honest, it took me a while to be ready to write this piece, because I knew that, unlike the writing I had done for any previous platform, the New York Times' opinions page just puts you in the crosshairs. You know something is coming, inevitably. So the range of reactions was, Mark is right, but he shouldn't be the one saying this, because I was part of the problem, although I was always someone who said you need to grow a local market alongside your international market, you shouldn't treat this as a financial device, et cetera, et cetera. So one is, is Mark is right, but he's not allowed to say it. The other is that it's, it was narcissistic for me to publish this. Jerry Salt said something like, it was actually kind of beautiful, and Jerry said something like, I'm the most superficial person in the world for writing about this, and maybe it's just sour grapes, because Mark is saying what I've always been saying, but now people are paying attention. I would say maybe critical but narcissistic was confusing to me. And then there were people who felt like, because I had focused on the galleries, I was marginalizing the role of artists. Larry Pittman wrote into the New York Times, and he said, you're going to paraphrase here. Something like, the engine of the art world isn't galleries, Mark's speaker, it's the artists. And if we're going to play with that metaphor, I would say that artists are the fuel of the art world, but the engine is what takes that fuel and turns it into momentum. I certainly think the reason why it's important to focus on what's wrong with the gallery model right now and how it can be fixed is because the galleries bring the artists into play. That's the importance of galleries. You know, if it wasn't for the artist, it wouldn't really matter, but the fact is, there's no other mechanism at the moment that brings the artists forward in the same way the galleries do, and that's why I think it matters. Maybe artists are the engine of the art world, and galleries are the engine of the art market, and there's a distinction there, and that's what I thought from Larry's comment. I thought he's conflating the art world to the art market. Fair. Fair. As if there was one art market. One art world. Yeah. We're at distinct things, which of course they are. There's a humongous art world. Just go to museums, go to alternative spaces, go to universities where people teach, where young artists get taught, go to all sorts of places where you can see an experience art online. For example, that's part of the art world, but not necessarily the art market. For me, in the glass half full sense, and I throw to you, Amy, in your decades of experience about the growth in the art market, and the growth in the art world, and where we are today. What's your overview for that of here where you are at the end of July 2026? Well, just one thing that Mark said that I'd like to pivot on. I don't really think luxury goods are the closest adjacency to the art market. I think real estate is closer than luxury goods, because real estate is their unique properties. They're uniqueness to whatever real estate you buy, the specialness. If anything, art is the antidote to luxury. If you're just entirely bored with this new season of handbag, and you're yearning for something a little richer and deeper in feeling and meaning, then art will probably satisfy a bit more. Well, and on the real estate thing, real estate was really close to the art market because the only people with extreme wealth 40 years ago were really the people in the real estate world of the collectors, because the leverage bio was supreme. Aristocrats? And also Hollywood. Come on, all 40 years ago was all the big Hollywood guys. But there weren't that many. So there was much broader world that I could see, the Jerry Spires, the Maclos, and all that. In New York, for sure. In New York, in particular, that it really related not so much in how it functioned, but it was really adjacent to real estate market, because the lawyers were only making $1,000 an hour, and the real estate guys could make 10 million bucks at a pot. I mean, in objecthood, real estate is more akin to art because it's unique, and there's a uniqueness to every property and a uniqueness to--and most collectors are really drawn to quality real estate. Good collectors are drawn to quality real estate in the way the drawn to quality works of art. Whereas luxury, for me, is something that is in production. It can be beautiful, it can be sparkly and engaging, but it doesn't have the same resonance in its production and fashionability and transience that art has. There's sort of two trends going on is, like, is luxury the gateway to art? I would say that's one option that I was just sort of looking at it that way, or is art the gateway to luxury? And I think art and luxury function very differently, and it's a colossal mistake to conflate them, but maybe I'm wrong, Mark. I wouldn't conflate them. I agree with this unique object's aspect of real estate, but these are the ways in which I think of the art market and luxury market as being similar. They are global markets. They are markets which are driven by visual impact. They are markets whose pricing is-- almost entirely perception-based in a way that I think real estate is not. Real estate has utility, for example. And I also think like people build much larger collections of art than they do of real estate. But I understand that the uniqueness is true. That's a way in which real estate is more similar. I mean, both can be true. We can draw metaphors from both. But 15 years ago, LVMH was sales were roughly half the size of the art market and now they're 50% bigger. And that's one company. And granted, it's the biggest company and they bought some things. But still, in a moment where they surged, where they went into Asia in a way that the art world did not. In a moment where luxury learned to develop new products for the new generation of buyers, the art world did not. Well, just one comment about that before going back to Amy. I mean, one place that LVMH failed was when they owned an art business. And you take arguably the greatest luxury business and lost hundreds of millions of dollars owning an auction house. So if it was easy to just combine art and luxury, smarter people have tried and failed. I think I just want to say LVMH, which is one of the greatest luxury empires and great collection. We're not very good at being third. And that was the problem. So they bought a third business, third caliber, third quality, like third with two gigantic, historically deeply rooted competitors. And they were very bad at playing third. They're very good at taking something from seven to 10. They don't take things from one to three. They just don't know how to do that. They want to be important. Not everyone listening to this podcast, fortunately, is R.H. So it might be important to say what you guys are talking about because I remember it, but it was a long time ago. Yes, when they bought Phillips in the 90s. Oh, if you don't know that you shouldn't be listening to this 20 times, okay. Okay. The fact of the luxury and art and how we position things, Amy. For me, I have a kind of casual passing interest in fashion and luxury. I have an enormous interest in art. And I, most of the people I talk to have a kind of folly relationship with fashion and luxury. It's like kind of interesting a little bit, but it doesn't feed them the way art does. And I mean feed them intellectually, socially, spiritually, even. So in the coin toss, I take art all day long. And so would most people I talk to? So including me. I think it's like fine to be interested in luxury. I think it's, there's parts of it that are super cool, but it does not deliver the dividend of pleasure and depth that art does. At least for me, I've seen so many art collectors dress, shrubby, sitting in the back of the plane, going to mediocre hotels and restaurants. And then they're which is not in praise of shlubby, in praise of shlubby, really, the shlubby collectors. Amy and Mark and I like to turn left. Let me be super clear. I am not saying art is a luxury good. What I'm saying is when I was running our puzzle, the industry that I told my team that they needed to follow closely aside from the art market was fashion because I saw these similarities in terms of how the markets were expanding or not expanding. And I do think and you can disagree with me that the fact that the art market stagnated at a time when luxury expanded because it had all these new markets said something about how this is didn't develop. Well Amy, let me get at this in a different way. In your advisory, how much of that in particular with your partners in Asia are new clients. Do you mean new, like young, just collecting for the first time or just new to us, new to the firm? Both. I don't like to use the word young about collectors because they might be just starting their 50s or 60s and they have this similar parameters of being new to it. Me personally, I have a number of newer collectors and I see more and more of them out there at the same time where stuck at this 65 billion threshold. And so I'm wondering if you're seeing that as well that in fact the appetite and the potential audience is in fact increasing. I would say we have new clients both in chronological age, meaning they are younger and that's a little bit more in Asia just because of the demographic and how mature that marketplace is compared to ours. In New York, I would say we have new clients, some of whom are older but have maybe collected for a while but need a new kind of point of view or vantage point or need to sort of prune the tree a bit and grow in a new direction or something like that. So I would say new business acquisition can come from someone of any age but they're looking for a new iteration of collecting. The younger client who started in Asia who originally started collecting fashion things and sneakers and all that kind of stuff but quickly pivoted to art and is not completely interested in art. Can I ask a question to both of you because you guys actually work with collectors in a way that I don't, right? I've written a lot and talked a lot about generational wealth shift and how it's affecting things but to me, I think if there's one exception to what's happening in the West, it's what's happening in Asia because there I do feel like there are a lot of young people who are starting to collect building private museums etc and the way that I don't see in the West but maybe I'm thinking. It's the tax code, that's why they don't have inheritance tax in the same way we do here. And I think spending time like being at the opening of the art fair and soul, everybody was under 35, everybody was carrying like a $50,000 purse but they were on their phone with their parents to talk about whether they could buy something. Asia's sort of this kind of virgin forest, right? So of museums and the like. Whereas like if you're a very well-to-do 35 year old who inherited a couple billion dollars and want to start collecting art in America, look at the competition. But I do something as interesting as the Met or the MoMA or even the Frick, you stand among giants where you're trying to do something whereas we've all flocked to the private museums and China and other parts of the world. Like you can make a huge impact very quickly in a place where there isn't that infrastructure of great institutions and collecting entities that have been around for decades and decades, potentially centuries as in Europe. So I think that's our podcast from Bangkok for the one place. There, I agree with you. Yeah. So it's a little bit tax code how you inherit money and what's the scale of the largest that you don't have to pay taxes on. And also just the feeling that I think it would be hard for a 35 year old in Europe certainly and certainly in America to think they could make some impact with their collecting in New York or LA or Texas or Florida or something whereas if you're in Bangkok or Singapore or Seoul you probably can make a bigger impact. So let's come back to this in a sense. We started with art galleries are not okay and we've had a lot of people talking about it. There's a lot of complaining. It's the art fairs fault. It's too expensive. It's this and that. There's a lot of woe is me talk and as an advisor. Do you think the art was good at that? Yes, especially in New York. And it's like from my vantage point maybe yours too. It's like I see new people coming in and I think instead of bitching it's like what can we do to improve things and look for solutions. And I think the issue for the galleries is they not figured out how to communicate with these new people. That they're just hoping I always go back to what you said about hope. Hope is not a strategy. Okay and what was your end line of your article mark? Phomo is not a business model. It wasn't the end line but yeah. Yes and I think those are kind of where galleries are sort of looking around. So is it something that internally is at a state of mind? What can we people with almost a hundred years of experience in the art world? At least I have 50. So you're much older than you. We're over 100. We're over 100. And to really lean into an audience that wants to get out of this woe is me thing. What might they be doing? I've been really trying to lean in that personally. The bear facts directly with free products and stuff like that. Amy from your side first and then some mark because you've spent more time trying to deal with that. Well I was talking to a young dealer who I like and admire and love their sensibility and taste. And I said look when you have a gallery you basically have a store. If people don't want to come to your store you have to change the way you run your store. You have to change your product. You have to change how you invite people in. What your points of synergy and intersection are with other businesses in the field? Like you're running a commercial business. And when you told them that what do they say? He was like oh my god oh my god. He was like god that's so reductive. I'm like baby it's what it is. You got to retail up. That's what it is. So you have to figure out how to grow your followers. And that doesn't mean you have to become big or mass or you have to start selling prints or something. I'm simply saying you may have a very niche customer base. It might be a very successful, fantastic small boutique but you have a very loyal following collector base or a loyal customer base that wants to come and see what you're doing and is really interested all the time. And if they're not doing that you must not be interesting enough or you're not going about client acquisition in the right way. You're not marketing yourself correctly. You mean sending out a PDF and hoping that somebody will email you is not sufficient? Hope is not a strategy is it? Mark let's go a little deeper on this. I think we have to question all our assumptions at this point. We have to do that every day all the time to be excellent. I think particularly now in a time of crisis I think it's good to question. If you haven't yet it's too late. Well then it may be too late for a lot of people. Probably. For example like Amy said we don't have to start selling prints, right? I love the print market. We have a situation now where a lot of galleries have invested a lot of time and money into building up the reputations of artists and because they don't sell prints people like avant art or Henny are selling prints by their artists. So actually someone else is monetizing the hard work that they did. And again we talk about like how do we get people in the door or through the cash register. Nobody doesn't really matter like customers in audience. client as a client, you know? And if you have nothing to sell the client, because you're afraid to sell to them because you don't know who they are or because they can't afford what you're doing, then maybe having work by the artist that's in multiples is not the worst thing. I don't know why it's considered so down market to deal with that part of the artist's work as long as it's done at a high quality level. It's just a different business, that's the issue. It's because the production aspects, the sort of volume aspect, it's just a very different business. I think the print market is still the greatest gateway drug to really, to collecting art and I own prints myself and there's artists like own prints of that I could never afford to buy a unique work of art. But it has changed. I mean, where somebody started with prints and they went to drawings and went to paintings, and I was talking to somebody who met somebody. Their first painting was 27. Their first artwork, 27 million dollars. You got that world too, so there's multiple artworks. If you basically saying you can't get into this game for less than 10 million bucks, then you're never going to access the next print. That world is ultimately minuscule and aspirational. It's so small, you can't even, don't let big numbers disqualify you from your own pleasure and enjoyment at your own level. Come on. Let me throw two numbers that I've written. If you have 750 billionaires in America, and if you assume that half of them pretty much don't buy art, but if they each spend a million dollars a year on art as new people, the people at the top of the pyramid would be fighting for these people. But it brings $375 million of new business into a $65 billion business. It's not even a rounding area. You have 22 million millionaires in the United States, depending upon how you define it. If they each spent $10,000 a year, that's $22 billion of new money. So the target, as what you were saying before, is like we have to be looking as an industry for that group. Also, with the group you mentioned first, which is the big group at the top of billionaires, who's to say they don't just buy four or five things for the living room and quit and are not interested in pursuing this any further, or they just have a big decorating budget, so they finish out what they want and then they're done. It's certainly better and more gratifying to cultivate collectors who are really curious in it for the long haul. And also, I know you guys don't completely buy into this luxury metaphor, but the reality is that what really drove the growth of luxury was not high end couture. It was handbags and perfume. Right, you know, t-shirts, Chanel, t-shirts, aspirational things. And that is the prints and additions. And it doesn't have to be done at a shitty level. We need more collectors getting in at different starting points. How do we do that? How does a gallery with five employees figure out how to engage with it? Let's say they agree. What next do they do? If they go into a lower price point, they're willing to consider that growth can come from sort of building the base, the pyramid for themselves higher. What should they be doing? Well, this is a social aspect, right? Like, you have to find and connect with the demographic who has the disposable income to do it. Maybe you do it through your alumni association of your college. Maybe you do it through your community by becoming involved in a local museum or something like this. Even if you live in New York, you could do it by becoming involved in a museum at a smaller city or something like this. There's a lot of different ways you can connect with people who are interested, maybe not already spoken for or obvious in their predilections already. I know certain young dealers who I think are doing a good job and are excellent at connecting. The social aspect is, I think the part that's probably slightly fatiguing for us is the vast amount of social aspects of the art world that is just endless, right? And I think the best young dealers have good social networking skills and that's important. This episode of the Bearfax Podcast is brought to you by Ursula, a magazine of contemporary culture by Hauser and Worth, featuring essays, profiles, films, interviews, original portfolios and photography by thought provoking writers and artists from around the world. And now, back to the show. Mark, you sort of had that challenge because the art fairers have sort of two systems going there. It's opening day or two VIP. And then to my mind, the real target is those other 50,000 people are paying 50 bucks or 100 bucks to get in and that group has not been communicated with. Well, not by the art fairs so much, but I think by the galleries in the fair, is that safe to say? Let me take one step back from there and to explain how I think about this. I don't think it's the job of art fairs to create collectors. I think it's a job of art fairs to convene collectors. I think it's the job of galleries and to a lesser extent museums through their patrons group and totally create collectors out of people who have the mindset of I hate agreeing with you. I do agree. I'm sure we'll find about something else later. But I think there's a middle point. You know, I think if you say there's a few thousand key collectors who are coming in on opening day, and then there's 50, 60, 70, 80,000 other people coming, there's what the French would call the Hutt Bulschwazier, what the Germans would call the middle stonder, what we would call kind of the upper middle class, which is traditionally much more active in Europe than in the States. You know, that you have this kind of doctor, lawyer, et cetera, who buys because they feel like that's part of being a person in society. That was this class became more and more difficult to approach. And like something actually before my time at Art Basel was they, at one point, they tried to think where they had a little sticker next at work that would say like less than 5,000 francs and no artist wanted that. I think they should put the prices on things. Oh, that's a whole other, that's another pot. I mean, I kind of agree. I agree too. I mean, if you're selling something you should have it and you should. Yeah. People should know what it is. And you, I think it's an impediment for people who are in tech or who are a little bit fearful of the art world. It's something to be mistrusted that there's no price tag on something. So why don't you even eliminate what makes it important? Wow, or I can't afford it. The old thing of like a way you have to engage in conversation to see what other things they have. So when they have nothing and they like, I like it, I get afforded. The traditional explanation I've always heard for not having prices and not sometimes not even having a name on the wall next to the artwork is that it forces the collector into conversation with the Galarist. My feeling is that it encourages people to go to a place where they feel better received as a client. I totally agree with Amy that prices would be a good thing. I mean, if you go to an auction occasionally, there's price upon request, but it's like seldomly. Very seldom. And basically, when it says price upon request, it means you can't afford this. It just means like it's a small audience of people at the very top of it. So a point is that I think it's totally an impediment not to have this kind of transparency. Maybe one of the reasons your auction has is can have growth is because they put the price on everything. That's very useful to put the price on things. I don't know. I think part of what would keep art fairs more robust is if there was a way to sort the fair before you walked in other than getting a legend map of where each gallery is that you might or might not have heard of. And if there was an app that said all the work in this fair under $10,000, all the art in this fair by artists from Japan, all the art in this fair that is printer multiple, everything by Picasso. Like you can really, if you could create those, it's so easy to do this. But I think the impediment maybe isn't the fair owners. It's really the dealers giving up the information of what's there with that. There was an interesting experiment when we canceled art Basel Hong Kong in February of 2020. We pivoted quite quickly into the online viewing rooms. And one of the innovations we did there was that we said you have to put a price range on every work. And the reason why I did that was because I always thought it was important but now I had the leverage to do it. And the data that drove that was there was a study that artsy had done and artsy at the time at least allowed people to have things with prices or without prices. And the inquiry ratio for prices versus not prices is something like eight to one. Like basically you were 800 times or 800 percent more likely to get requests on something that had prices not. Because a lot of people coming into the market assume that everything is a million dollars because that's all they ever read about. Look, I am among the highest users of the auction market, the art market, art fairs, dealers. Okay. When I see something that like I can't get a price on, I'm like, look, I had an idle curiosity but you just killed it. Because mostly I know what everything's worth with the exception of certain emerging things where I don't know. Like I have someone who has a sense of what most things are going to be priced at. I'm unusual in my background it tastes, but it's just for the record state that Amy is one of the least timid people I've ever met. So, so in addition to I can't be bothered, there's also like I'm afraid for most people. But that's why the BFX read ran an experiment that we've kept of saying not that Mark Speaker is now represented by Amy Cabellot. So we say and the prices are in a certain range. Yeah. With the notion of that would be good for the galleries for having vetted contact and good for the artists and good for the collectors to say that's interesting to me at that level. And I didn't know if galleries would spit that information up and most of them do. So beyond price transparency, what else might they do? And I'm going to throw this one to Mark. I want to put this into sort of the AI tech thing because you spent a lot of time thinking this way. Is some of the solution for galleries in particular or art businesses through a different use of technology and or AI? I really call them last year for my business a fashion column about this. The topic was, is the art market AI proof? The short answer is I think that artists are deploying AI like crazy. Like they always do with new technology. But I don't see a lot of use of it in the market yet. I assume the auction houses are using it to a greater degree than the galleries because they operate at a bigger scale and they have like whole tech divisions. Every time Spotify suggests a song to you or Google suggests a recipe. up to you or whatever it is, that's AI, right? So in theory, AI could help you find things you like, based on other things you like. I just think the reasons why people like One Art Worker or Another Art Work is so buried in their conscious and unconscious that it's hard for AI to do that by. If we assume the social media, in particular, Instagram, is the driving force of social interaction right now when it relates to the art world outside of IRL events, certainly I think the galleries who are using things like clawed and clawed code and agents to do things like design the most powerful possible carousels of images and all that kind of stuff will succeed because the reality is we're at a stage now where the algorithms driving social media are so complex that you need an AI to understand it. Like humans can't understand it. So you basically need an AI to interact with the algorithms to figure out what's going to work in terms of targeting people. So there, I think, to the extent that people are marketing using social media, AI is probably a very valuable tool. I don't know how valuable it is in terms of the higher level discussions with individual collectors around unique objects. We all use AI all the time. It's helping us in every single way every day all the time and I think it's here to stay. So there's no point in debating whether or not it's more like how will you harness it and use it and will you let it dictate things your own brain used to decide on it? Like how much are you going to let it be a part of you? Like, for example, it's curious to me that I think AI can really shape what people see and what they like because they start to like what gets a lot of likes and TikTok and Instagram are very visual media. I don't think AI will help you like something you don't like the smell of or taste, right? If you don't like the smell of taste, that's still very, very primal to each of us. And there's nothing on AI that would get me to like something I didn't like the smell of, you know? So thankfully those senses are still intact and we're still connected to those very human animal instincts. I think to pretend it's of no utility and we should be wary because I'm sort of worried with AI that people will only want 30 artists and that's it because the funnel will just narrow become narrow and narrow and people will only think these are the right artists or if they Google an artist will only want to see images by that artist that are on the first page. So if they search up really an artist's work, it's like, I don't know what are these baskets. Yeah, well, like go to page four and there won't be anything under $10 million dollars. Yeah, AI has killed search. Here's a terrifying fact. Something like 60% of Google searches do not result in people clicking on links. They just take that little summary from AI mode. At your point, like these are the 10 baskets that matter. As you were talking, I thought of something else. I teach a course at Bokone in Milan. It's a master's level course to people who study cultural management and one of my student groups this year actually had a great idea. And if anybody listening wants to do this, I please would ask you to invest in them because I'm putting their idea out there. But it's basically galleries would share a broad range of business data in a secure confidential environment, which would allow the entity doing this to sort of compare what's happening all the different businesses and point out to galleries. You know, these guys are paying a lot more for shipping than you are and maybe even do like consolidated buys. So actually, you know, what consulting firms like McKinsey do, for example, is they understand businesses better than anybody else's because they're working with like 10 fashion companies or 10 small industrial makers of selling machines. And so the idea that you would actually harness the data from a broad group of galleries to better understand what best practices could be or where there's kind of air in the system that could be squeezed out and to the benefit of the galleries would actually be a great use of AI. If everybody shared information, it would be, you know, right now the shipping companies kind of own the small galleries because it's gotten so expensive to move things around the world. Think of the consolidation of cost around shipping around HR and benefits around health insurance insurance. I would think of even rents. I mean, it would be so genius to take power in your own expenses by sharing information. But we're kind of a quirky individualistic industry and everyone is sort of alone will for pirate of the round. But this is but this is a problem because I think most industries as much as their competitors also find ways to collaborate to their own benefit, you know, they lobby better than the art market does, you know. But collaboration might be part of the way out of this and an industry that in some provincial places, the guy cross the street is your enemy. In New York, the guy cross the street is your friend. Neither one of you can own all New York City. Or we're afford to not collaborate at certain times or not share, you know, synergistic information that would help the business. But well, yes, we could, you could create a system where people were somewhat forced into that. But there will be an idea that the market will do it. Like survival, survival of the business. But Amy, what if everybody no one answers me on this? It's maybe you will. It's like, what if everybody in New York came together and we said, you have to pay to go to galleries. And we're going to revenue share that. And the small garras are going to get the heap of it because the gogions don't really need that $20,000 a month the same way. That'd be a collab with this thing. Is that kind of socialist model? I don't really like that. We pay to get into everything else. I mean, the other way to do it would be would be the opposite model and could actually work right now in in Zoran Mamdanis, New York, which is to say that actually galleries offer a public benefit by making culture available for free. And therefore, they should have a completely separate tax code than a normal business. Mamdanim, by the way, put a huge amount of money into culture. That's what I'm saying, right? That would be the other way of doing this. Rather than forcing the public to pay directly that you just say, no, you could just say the galleries and replicas. Well, there'd be no sales tax on art. Under like we have the public. That's a solution. Sales tax would be something. I'd want to be careful about how much you invite government into the art market. I just want you to be cautious about that. For example, one of the biggest nuts for every young gallery is the rent. So you're not going to get landlords to comply because it's just not rent to art galleries. Like if there's a certain like cap on whether or not to charge an art gallery, they're just not going to rent it. They'll make it worse. So I don't believe regulation is always the way forward in a very small niche market. I think regulation is definitely the way forward for lots and lots of things like food and pharmaceuticals and schools and keeping the roads safe and all that. But I don't know. My counter argument to that would be that there's a difference between regulating a business and a business lobbying on its industry's behalf. If people don't have to pay taxes on things like reinvested capital gains, you know, I can't we imagine that galleries would have a different tax structure. I could see where cultural producers like people who are keeping New York New York by keeping it a cultural center would get a certain kind of tax break up to a certain level. I mean, certainly some of the big mega galleries do not need a tax break. But if you if art sold under say 25,000 hours was sales tax exempt, that's like a 10% discount for collectors. Arguably yes, but you know, you have to be to imagine how that will be abused. So two questions I have for you. Every time you think of a regulatory thing, think of who would be the regulator, that's terrifying, right? Who would run around and police that? Some flunky dealer who's mad at everyone for being successful or what would be the abuse of that tax? Sure, for example, for anti-regulars. Well, sure, then everybody would sell for 24, 9, 9, 9. Right, but think of this too. Would there be like a Mazda showroom that would call themselves a gallery and suddenly they're selling, you know, some of their lower-on-products, actually. It's fine. Like there will be abuse of it. Like no tax on over time. I don't know. Anything an edge fund guy says all my work is or tips. The gallery business like all businesses is a little bit survival of the fittest. Let's go pick up an 80s-90s issue of art for them and look at who took ads back then and how many of those galleries are stomachs. They generally, apart from generational succession within a family, they generally don't survive beyond the lifespan of the person who's engaged and interested and has their name on the door. It's just the way it is. It's just how business rolls. Okay, so I have two more places to go to wrap this up and one you might not have any comment about, but again, in people trying to raise the amount of people interested in the art world, your market, prediction markets. Well, that's Hilton Styron's comment was the most telling. Contemporary art has outlived its utility now because it's just another predictive prediction market and a gambling market and that's all people are. This is what has supplanted contemporary art or has co-opted contemporary art into that utility. I mean, I thought that was funny, but I don't know that there are that many people who are playing the art market in the same way. You were at Pollyanna on that side. I'm over, I was in the auction game for a long time. I can tell you. No. So you think there are people from who the prediction markets replace the art market as a kind of casino environment? I think there are people that generally have the mind space of being that kind of investor gambler type and I come from a world where people were generally speaking, always going to spend what we'll call real money, like meaning they weren't starting out, typically at $1,000 or $10,000. It was a little bit go big or go home for the contemporary market in that way. And so their mindset is that kind of trader gambler mentality. They could love it immensely. I'm not going to judge the way anyone loves anything, but they also have a mentality about I put real money in that. I'm going to play that. I'm going to gamble that. So I actually think that the prediction markets will not play a huge role in the art world because already what we're seeing with the prediction markets is like, for example, you just have this thing where the guy who was running Trump's teleprompter is being accused of having that. So what you have is you have the predictions market or market that started as kind of the free flow of information and the wisdom of crowds and people rapidly realizing that the people who are winning there, it's a very small percentage of people, tend to be people who have access to inside information. So when you combine that with the fact that the art world is already seen as a place where the winners are people of access to inside information that I don't know who would bet on anything in the art market without having inside information, which is not going to have enough people betting to actually make it work. You know, it will disadvantage smaller investors who won't just one thing, but that's lots of units can shape a market and move. That's already the case that winners winner take all. It's like 10%. But I'd love to see the prediction market bros go to like vassar and interview all the gender studies majors and figure out who's going to be the next great artist. I'd love to see like those crazy worlds. You know, let's go look at the metal smithing group at RISD and figure out who the star is here in sculpture. That only works as a prediction market if you have tons and tons and tons of people who are betting against the bros. I don't see that happen. You need volume and capital and that's not really. It'll be a while. I would always go to auctions and I would do over underbats with my neighbors. You know, it's like watching the football game. It's fun because I can't afford to buy anything there, but I can bet with my neighbor and whoever loses take the show. We always have the same thing before the sale. We'd all sit around and go, okay, what's the, what's your, so their opportunity is exactly that it's fun and I can participate in that sense and and then there's no cap on fun. The only way that that works is where you think there's a risk of not selling you pretend like you're going to sell super high so you get a lot of people bidding on that. That's called painting the tape. That's very common. So I want to shift to one last thing that we all have in common and sort of end on a hopeful note. And last night I was out and lower aside at concerts than my daughter and her promotional group put of like 15 acts. It was a benefit for charity and the positivity of that generation. In my mind is really encouraging in this time of like chaos from our generation in the world that I feel real hope from like watching it through the eyes my daughter. Do you see some hope in our kids that gives you as a parent a little bit? Well, it would be damning and devastating both for me and for my, part of the reason to have kids is to watch the next generation grow and be inspired and have that inspire you. I mean, that's a great thing about kids if you're lucky and you have that with them. So I see their take on things is definitely a different generations take and they have a kind of exuberance for what's possible as all youth should and then does in my case. But I think there'll be stewards of something not more complicated than we became stewards. I think it's all very complicated like it was never easy like it's not easy but you'll find a way forward in the business of music or art or whatever your children does at film. That's another area and tremendous upheaval right now. I think they'll all find a way forward if they've been trained to be creative. If they are inspired by creative people and creative things they'll find that way forward. When I look at my kids I'm not worried about the relevance of art in the future. You know, I took my kids to Paris a while back and I really wanted them to see love as the message they're author J.F.A.P.s and I was disappointed because when I arrived it wasn't playing in the rotunda and I was like oh my god I brought them basically here to see this and it turned out it was playing the basement and I brought them there and then my daughter actually just stayed in that room and she kept just kept watching it and similarly yesterday I went to go see the "Dougate Can Lightscape" piece at the shed and like the kids sat in there for the whole 65 minutes you know and then in the evening we went to dinner at a close friend of mine from way back to I'm a tailor who's a tech guy and an SF-moment board member who's living in Harlem and we walked through his whole collection and we talked about music and my son right now is hanging out with skater kids who he met over Instagram and they're talking about art and music and all that kind of stuff and so I'm not at all worried about the relevance of art because of social media. I actually think that's not the problem. I think the question is how do we take this passion? How do we take the fact that art is more present in more lives because it's so easily broadcast and people are so easily connected with each other now and and create that into a support system for the creation of art. Whether that's galleries or some other mechanisms. So my conclusion is if you're a gallery owner think of it as if you were 25 and coming to this. How would I go about it in a way that's rebellious against my parents but thoughtful and deliberate rather than just like we do it this way because we've always done it this way. We think it with their passion. Those kids have passion and I think passion is missing in our business out of fear. I think if you're 25 year old aspiring art dealer you wouldn't look at some of the OGs and say I need 14 locations around the world like I think that would seem very old-fashioned and retarded to our to most younger people. So they'll take care of iterating you know they'll they'll do that. That's what they'll do. Well I'm that I look forward to being around to seeing it and for us to think that way and as parents to watch it through our kids. Ah youth so good. As Mike Kelly would have said. So thank you Mark thank you Amy. Thanks Josh. Please send us comments more questions and thank you for listening to the Bear Facts podcast. Thanks again to Mark and Amy for joining us on the Bear Facts podcast. And thanks to our sponsor Ursula, a magazine of contemporary culture by Hauser and Worth. Now we'll be back next month but until then if you want more from us every week we have a free newsletter called No Reserve and for paid subscribers the Bear Facts newsletter which is now in its fourth decade which gives you an insider's view into the art world and the art market. Head to our website to find out more.