Building Value in Soft Markets
On taste, timing, and investing in art when it feels least rational.
Afternoon, my sun-drenched friends.
Spring has arrived. The flowers are out in force, and so too is the art world. May’s calendar looks as busy as ever, with fairs, auctions, exhibitions, and galas dotting every Google Calendar in the city. I wouldn’t be surprised if, despite every headwind imaginable, the energy for spring and summer feels like one final hoorah before the hammer comes down in the fall.
Airline stocks are falling on earnings as more carriers are pulling sales guidance. The dollar is weakening. Earnings are... mixed. But stocks are rebounding one minute and plummeting the next, because why not. In the words of a Fox News anchor, "uncertainty has never felt this uncertain." A rare occasion where we agree.
In spite of the slow roiling unease, I found myself seated at a lovely dinner last week hosted by a friend who’d assembled a mishmash of people from her life. I was dead center, drifting between conversations between both ends of the table, who seemed to represent both sides of my personality.
Between Smock and Silk Blouse
To my left, our host’s childhood friend—an artist—alongside her playwright husband, sitting opposite another painter and a photographer. Each of them warm, open, and as prone to erupting in laughter as they were to passionately debate the future of theatrical puppetry. A bohemian dream—equally plausible in interwar Montmartre as in Chelsea today.
To my right, friends made in adulthood—two American women, one now living in London, both art world insiders and Upper East Siders to boot. Draped in pearls and bows, with matching Park Avenue apartments. Just as likely to have existed at a Belle Époque salon in the 16th arrondissement as in Chelsea today.
I was sitting between them. Between the smock and the silk blouse. Two forces that have always shaped the art world—creative energy and the capital behind it—and whose uneasy dance determines its future. It’s honestly a caricature to say that they don’t mix easily. We all know the tension.
Somewhere between the first course and the second glass of wine, someone made a joke: "at this point, everything is a recession indicator, so nothing is a recession indicator," they quipped.
It stuck with me—not just because it was funny, but because it exposed a deeper anxiety I’ve been circling —
When every signal points to instability, when uncertainty becomes ambient, how do we decide what still matters?
It’s in that context that the art world—the openings, the auctions, the breathless press releases, the overflowing social calendar—can start to feel particularly unmoored. In times like these, the very act of caring about art can seem like a charming but impractical hobby.
But as I kept turning the question over, I continually landed in the same place: this is exactly when art matters most. Not as escapism, but as infrastructure.
The Long View of Taste
Culture, like capital, isn’t something we inherit fully formed—it’s something we build, neglect, rebuild, and sometimes accidentally destroy, over time.
After all, the best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second best time is now.
If we only value art when times are good, we reduce culture to a luxury item—a champagne toast at the end of a bull run. But art isn’t just the icing on prosperity; it's part of the foundation of any society that hopes to outlast its own market cycles.
This is where the difference between collecting as performance and collecting as participation comes into focus.
Performance is surface: acquisition as social signal, taste displayed like plumage, art deployed as a trophy.
Participation is deeper: the act of supporting the cultural ecosystem itself—providing the material support (attention, belief, money) that allows the survival of ideas and practices that won’t weather market storms without human intervention.
The collector shapes the market as much as the market shapes the collector. Every acquisition is both a signal and a support beam. Now, Bourdieu would tell you that collecting is all performance—that taste is just social positioning. And he’s not wrong.
But taste is also an ecosystem. Opting out doesn’t absolve you from the game; it just means you’re letting someone else set the rules.
The Countercyclical Eye
This is the real alchemy of collecting—not just signaling taste, but sustaining the conditions in which cultural value can be created at all.
Participation isn’t passive support; it’s active investment in what I think of as cultural infrastructure. Infrastructure is what outlasts cycles. It’s the scaffolding that lets ideas, practices, and communities persist—even when the external incentives for caring have all but evaporated.
And if that feels like the last thing anyone wants to do in a downturn, fair enough. Spending on art—especially emerging art—can feel wildly counterintuitive when every economic indicator is flashing red. But participating in the art ecosystem doesn’t always require a checkbook. It starts with training your eye.
See everything you can. Play that internal game of "what would I buy?" even if you're not buying yet. Taste isn’t built in a bull market. It’s honed when the cost of commitment—financial, emotional, intellectual—is higher. That’s when you end up owning things that actually matter—not just things that perform well in the eyes of others.
Staying in the Room
Seated between the smock and the silk blouse, I could feel the quiet unease that defines the art world—and, if I’m honest, defines parts of myself. The instinct to create and the instinct to conserve. The desire to chase new forms and the comfort of sustaining old structures.
The dreamers and the patrons, circling each other with a mix of fascination and suspicion. They don’t blend easily. They’re not meant to. But it’s in that uneasy dance that culture survives.
In uncertain times, it’s tempting to pick a side—or to step off the floor entirely. But maybe the work—the real work—is simply to stay in the room.
To keep caring. To keep participating. Even when, especially when, it feels impractical.
Culture isn’t something that just happens. It’s something we make—awkwardly, imperfectly, stubbornly.
Marginalia
For this week’s section of things I have consumed and considered, I’m testing out the title ‘Marginalia’. Do we like?
These are not quite recommendations, not quite reviews, but the week’s most compelling distractions, curiosities, and quiet obsessions. And what I am looking forward to in weeks to come.
This week
Art Related
Dumbo Open Studios — Got to spend some more time with Mary-Royall Wilgis and her light paintings. I love the way she creates a sense of transparency and weightlessness, and the joy that just resonates out from them. Its all well and good to have a deep and meaningful work, but I don’t want to hang it on my wall if it upsets me. These do the opposite.
Also, I will be hosting a Studio Series party with her later in May, the event is a artist talk and studio tour with some friends and interested collectors of Mary-Royall’s — get on the waitlist here.
Willem de Kooning @ Gagosian — I’ll go anywhere for a good de Kooning.
Lover’s Eye, Rachel Stern’s exhibition @ A Hug from the Art World — great fun, quirky space, the wallpapering and curation is lovely.
Haruka Papashi and Jake Michael Singer @ Leonovich Gallery — Singer’s stuff was good, but Papashi looked like he was knocking off Basquiat with the color palette of a 1980s ski suit.
Lucas Foglia @ Fredricks & Frieser - this was beautiful, taken from “the butterfly’s perspective” and commenting on migration – really lovely and meditative.
Rashid Johnson @ Guggenheim — Hauser & Wirth is dominating the New York museum scene right now, and this is definitely solidifying Johnson as top of their bracket.
Restaurants
Artesano — was supposed to go on Tuesday, but plans changed. Now it's on my radar and I am excited to go in the future.
Empire Diner — post gallery bite to eat, I genuinely cannot say enough good things about the Big Dill martini, if you like salinity and and alcohol, you would love it
The Highline Hotel — came on Friday afternoon to write, sat in the garden with strong wifi and an espresso tonic, which i will be drinking in the afternoons when I want alcohol but it's too early to be socially acceptable
Lelabar — for a glass of wine and big catch-up with a friend I haven’t seen in 7 years!!
TV
The Rehearsal, Season 2 — So, I have flight anxiety. It developed later in life and so I am still learning to manage it. Probably a control thing but I’m not going to look at it too deeply. I was anxious to watch The Rehearsal, because I adore and am bewildered by the first season, and authentically think it is a boundary-breaking form of media. Also, I delusionally think it might cure me of flight anxiety AND optimistically, create some safety changes in aviation which I am all for.
Last of Us, Season 1 — I’m actually really invested in these video game-turn-TV shows (Fallout being the other I enjoyed.) With Last of Us, I am inordinately protective of Ellie, and I am so desperate for her to be ok although I know she will not be because nothing is ok in this universe.
Web of Make Believe — Wild! I forgot how much the world has changed since the advent of the internet age in earnest. The show goes into the crazy true-crime stories that are only enabled by the internet and our hyperconnectivity.
Movies
Runaway Jury — A fun watch, not too intense but sufficiently engaging. John Cusak and Rachel Weisz were a fun pairing, and the twists and turns were duly surprising. I’m just reminded how amazing an actor Gene Hackmann was. I wish the world was still this black and white, it would be so soothing.
Music
Djo, The Crux — Djo’s New album has a distinctly LCD soundsystem vibe to it and that mixes well with the Shins so I’m jamming
Upcoming
Next week my fiancé and I are travelling to venue hunt for our wedding so, this section will be a little lighter than usual. Much to come on the update front when we return as we hit the ground running for the May Art season.
Art Related
The Frick Young Members Gala — The theme is Porcelain Garden, can’t wait to see how everyone turns out.
Frieze Art Fair — I haven’t been super impressed with the selections galleries brought the last two years, but heard wonderful things about Frieze LA, so I am curiously optimistic about this year’s fair.
Auction May Sale exhibitions — specifically, I’m hosting a walk through of the Phillips Marquee sale with Jeremiah Evarts, Deputy Chairman and Senior Specialist for Modern & Contemporary, so expect a run down of this soon.
Get on the waitlist here for Jeremiah’s tour of Phillips Marquee sale.
Sargent in Paris @ The Met — dying to see this, Madame X was a revelation when I first saw it, I remember making my first tumblr post a picture of her with the overlaid text “Diva is a female version of a hustler”, I know I was killing it
TV
Last of Us, Season 2 — I’m ready and waiting to have my heart ripped out. I know its coming. But, god forbid anyone hurt Ellie, I will be throwing hands.
You Diva Version of a Hustler
Love!
Exactly what’s been on my mind lately — not for the art market, but for the LGBTQ community. Many are quick to performatively participate in supporting minority communities when times are good and it’s in vogue (think, DEI). But performance switches to participation when times get tough and community infrastructure is needed, to support those whose funding has been stripped, whose lives and livelihoods are threatened