June 22, 2021
Art Collecting 2021: An Artsy Report
For this edition of Artsy’s Collector Report, we surveyed hundreds of art collectors about their online habits, preferences, pet peeves, and more.
Key Findings
In 2019, Artsy produced “The Online Art Collector Report,” which examined the behaviors of collectors who bought art online as a subset of the broader community of collectors. In the years since, much has changed about art collecting.
- In 2021, virtually every collector is an online collector. Among respondents, 84% said they had purchased art online, up from 64% of collectors in our 2019 survey.
- Collectors are embracing the online marketplace. More than half of collectors surveyed (58%) said they had used an online marketplace such as Artsy to purchase art, up from 41% in 2019.
- Collectors expect visible prices on works. Nearly two-thirds (62%) of respondents said the lack of visible prices kept them from buying art online.
Read the full report to learn seven additional key findings.
The Art That Collectors Care about Today
In addition to asking collectors how they discover, buy, and sell art, and what motivates those decisions, we also wanted to know what art they actually collect—what work inspires, moves, and motivates them.
Among all respondents, 60% said they prefer to purchase works by emerging artists. Read the full report to see which artists have seen the biggest surges in demand on Artsy.
Image credit: Jordan Casteel, detail of Pretty in Pink, 2019. Courtesy of Casey Kaplan.
Among art collectors, 84% have purchased artwork online.
More than 25% of collectors have sold or consigned works for sale online.
