Money matters—or does it?
JOHN STOMBERG
Virginia Rice Kelsey 1961s Director
Roaming the 2025 Art Basel Miami Beach fair this past December got me thinking about money and art. In museum work, we are often asked about the financial value of the artworks in our care. It's an awkward question to answer and largely a red herring. In our galleries, we present artworks that have extreme dollar-value differences. For us, though, the current market estimate has nothing to do with the worth of a work as we understand it. Our curatorial decisions depend entirely upon how various artworks relate to one another; how they spark emotional and intellectual responses; and how they reflect issues in and beyond the art world. Once a work of art is in our collection, the cost no longer concerns us.
Interestingly, the value of a work of art is often at odds with its appraised cost.
Like many of us, I often have been baffled by the market's excitement for countless naked emperors, but the high end of the art market does generally reflect the majority curatorial opinion. Importantly, though, this does not work in the opposite direction. The "value" of a work of art cannot be predicted by its cost alone—a lesson reinforced for me this year in Miami.
Near the entrance, one major gallery centered its presentation on an astonishing Joan Mitchell painting. Colorful and exuberant, it encapsulated all the excitement of Abstract Expressionism in one amazing canvas (well, two joined side-by-side). It's a definite knockout and, as it turns out, was the most expensive work of art at the fair this year. We also spent time on the far side of the fair with a work by Anne Samat, a Malaysian artist living now in New York. Her woven, materially diverse, tapestry-like installation reflected her love of family and the challenges that death and time inflict on us all. It was dazzling, universal, unforgettable, and priced far below the Mitchell painting. Both of these artworks could command equal attention in any art museum.
I find great solace in the hands of artists that I have known throughout my career but also immense joy in discovering new artists who expand my personal world and bring fresh vision to the art world. All this occurs outside the financial valuations of the market. Passion, grace, humility, insight, and delight are just some of art's gifts— experiences that ultimately transcend marketplace concerns.