Art Dealers

The art dealer Joseph Duveen once proclaimed, “When you pay high for the priceless, you’re getting it cheap.” The fine art market comprises passionate collectors willing to pay millions for a single piece of art, such as Edvard Munch’s The Scream, which recently sold for almost $120 million; Andy Warhol’s Car Crash, which sold for $105.4 million in 2013; and Francis Bacon’s Three Studies of Lucian Freud, which sold for more than $142 million in 2013. Art dealers exist within this unique market, which frequently fluctuates because of a variety of factors, including both macroeconomic trends in the broader market and microeconomic considerations such as how a work of art is sold. Powerful gallery owners and experts are at the heart of art dealing. Skilled ...