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We Should Buy Art

This spring, most of us will receive a $600 check from the government, an effort to stimulate the US economy.  Regardless of what you think about this legislation, the check is coming and it is coming with the expectation that you and I will put it into the US economy. We should buy Art with the money. 

A spring purchase of Art will allow us to aid our economy and ourselves.  It will satisfy the logic of our leaders and the impracticability of our imaginations.  Shopping for Art requires us to take time from our routine, add to our knowledge of the communities around us; and offers opportunities to connect to people and places and things.  Gallery hopping fills our heads with curiosity and connections, as we take in the offerings of galleries, alternative Art spaces, and artists’ studios.  All of this is good for us.  If the visits and questions and wonder culminate with a purchase, pleasure will accompany us home.  If spring closes with the energy of a promise of discovery but we remain ambivalent about a purchase; or we find $600 isn’t enough money, we can reschedule, perhaps to a different set of gallery spaces.  We may even plan to take in a summer Art fair.

When you give Art your attention, you are engaged in thoughtful creative activity and you benefit from that intellectual activity.  Active attention is energizing and expanding.  And when it’s focused on visual Art, it comes with a physical object.  Usually that object is available for a revisit.  Often, that object is available for purchase.  

Purchasing Art adds to the richness of one’s life. We can enjoy the purchase, donate it to a cause we support or loan it to an exhibition. The fostering of friendships among artists and curators and dealers and Art collectors expands our personal and professional network.  Understanding what resonates with us and how we assign value adds to our appreciation not only of Art but of our place in the world.

The purchase of Art not only supports an artist in a practical way, but it adds to his or her growth as an artist.  For you as patron have spoken.  You said. “This is extraordinary.”  “Here’s my check.”  “I value what you are doing.” That, ladies and gentlemen, is stimulation.

Lynn Carlson is a former naac board member, Art appraiser and continuing contributor to ArtBEAT. 

spring 2008

Lynn Carlson, M.A., M.S.