As an appraiser and art consultant, I receive a lot of questions about artwork value. Usually, the inquiries are from a client confirming an acquisition, or from an emerging artist seeking advice about pricing their own work. I also hear from insurance companies, tax attorneys, and individuals seeking to evaluate or sell an artwork. While insurance companies and tax attorneys are straightforward, the more interesting discussions are with individuals inquiring about evaluating artwork.

Ray Beldner. E Pluribus Unum (after Rembrandt Peale, George Washington, ca. 1854), 2005. Sewn US currency. Collection Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco.

Buying artwork can be difficult. For the experienced and novice collector alike, it's about value, where the artwork  represents a collector's aesthetic. It becomes a declarative emotional event when colored by acquisitive desire and perceived value, subjective elements defining personal aesthetic. Objectively, artwork is judged by technical merit (skill) and final price too. So it's no surprise that selling a treasured piece is difficult, especially when two more factors are added: condition and the artist's professional resume.
When an artist offers work for sale with a dealer or gallery, we correctly assume the work perfectly reflects the artist's intent. It matches the artist's description, and nothing more is needed to finish the work. If we like it, we accept its asking price, which becomes the work's perceived value. These are the subjective values that initiate discussions about intent and perception. Objectively, we understand good work is defined by a specific set of standards, and accept the final price as the price that brings it home.

Acquiring artwork is the acquisition of luxury. It won’t feed your children or protect you from the elements - but it nourishes the soul and, if you’re lucky, it will give you pleasure. It’s special, worthy of care, protection from theft and damage, and full enjoyment. Until it's time to sell.

When we sell a work of art, we evaluate it using a trifecta of factors: medium, making, and concept. We want to know what the medium is, how it’s used, and whether the artist successfully conveys a concept or intent. Medium (the materials the artwork is made of) is important because we need to consider the life of the artwork in terms of its conservation (and the costs associated with conservation). Knowing what an artwork is made of determines how to care for it under various conditions - the medium is the first informative element the artist gives us to keep his work pristine and protected from age and deterioration. Technical merit, or mastery of the medium, is the skill employed by the artist when making the work. It's the measure of the artist's creative and making process, and defines whether something is well made. It's the factor that brings us to the third step: considering the artist's intent, or underlying goal. The analysis of intent involves whether the artwork successfully conveys the artist's ideas.

John Baldessari. WHAT THIS PAINTING AIMS TO DO, 1967. Acrylic on canvas, 67.7 x 56.5 in

And it’s all good, until we decide it’s time to find a new home for an artwork. We need to establish the artwork's value.

When determining resale value for works of art purchased from a dealer or gallery, the first measure will be condition, or how perfect is the work to the original state it was in at the time of purchase. This is when we assess it for damage and renewed value. Damage can take many forms, and when determining artwork values, it is defined by any event taking place after the artwork’s sale that changed the original nature of the artwork when it was offered for sale. The damage could be as small as a tear to a work on paper or canvas, faded colors, or in the case of sculpture, it could be a break or crack. For work based on multiple pieces, it could be a single missing piece in an otherwise perfect set. A damaged artwork is different because of integral changes to it, where it no longer matches the artist’s original description of the artwork. It isn’t perfect anymore, and its original value is diminished.

The second determinant for resale value is the artist himself. Has the artist maintained his practice, or was he a one hit wonder? Does his work continue to be sold in galleries and shown at exhibitions? Does his work demonstrate a trajectory of professional growth in terms of creative process? If the artist is retired, has his work retained value or grown in value? Can the dealer who sold the artwork find an opportunity to represent it for resale?

Ultimately, after considering an artwork’s medium, technique, intent, condition, and the artist’s practice, its resale value is the value given to it by its new owner. As a result, it’s important for artists who wish to retain value to consider how they sell their work, and for collectors to consider how they acquire artwork to maintain the value of their collection. And that’s a thought for another day.

Review: Playing with Fire at the Oakland Museum

Glass is so gloriously seductive that it’s easy to relegate it to the status of mere “crafts” medium—as ceramics and photography once were. In 1962, the Toledo Museum of Art hosted workshops by glassmaker Harvey Littleton and scientist Dominick Labino; their innovations in low-heat glass and portable kilns (respectively) made glass studio-friendly. Playing with Fire: Artists of the California Studio Glass Movement at the Oakland Museum is one of 120 shows assembled by the Art Alliance for Contemporary Glass to celebrate the medium’s golden anniversary; it includes works by Marvin Lipofsky and Robert Fritz, who established glass programs in the Bay Area; their students—Richard Marquis, Jay Musler, and Mary White; and art glass’s third generation, which, notes Julie Muñiz, Associate Curator of Design and Decorative Arts, adds contemporary conceptualism to the abstraction or semi-abstraction favored by the post-craft pioneers.

The medium’s versatility comes across vividly in the show’s twenty-works. Lipofsky’s organic deconstructions of the vessel form (Zwiesel Series, Summer Sun, and California Loop) prove that nature and culture commingled nicely long before the supposed competition became an academic buzzword. Fritz’s Vessel and Vase and John Lewis’s Copper Patina Bench are, similarly, cultural works that retain traditional functions. Glass artists explore art-for-art’s-sake expression (Latchezar Boyadjiev, Jaime Guerrero, Danny Perkins, Randy Strong); poetic metaphor (Mark Abildgaard, Kathleen Elliot, Bella Feldman, Taliaferro Jones, Michelle Knox, Susan Longini, William Morris, Jay Musler, Richard Marquis, Therman Statom, Cassandra Straubing, Pamina Traylor, Mary White); and political critique (Clifford Rainey’s Erechtheum, a faux-museological installation featuring Coke bottles instead of Greek maidens; and Oben Abright’s Projections in Tun Yee, the glass portrait bust of a Burmese soldier, flickering with video images of political repression).

Playing with Fire: Artists of the California Glass Movement runs through March 24; Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak St., Oakland; (510) 318-8400; museumca.org. —DeWitt Cheng in East Bay Monthly.
Repost with permission from DeWitt Cheng.

Today's Downtown Gallery: A guide to Public Art in San Francisco

The San Francisco Planning Department oversees an art fund dedicated to the acquisition of public art for the City of San Francisco. Attached is a copy of the San Francisco Planning Department's guide to public art in downtown San Francisco, Today's Downtown Gallery.


Featured artists include: Bruce Beasley, Bella Feldman, Kent Roberts, Lee Lawrie, Thomas Marsh and Qiliu Pan, Mark Lere, Archie Held, George Rickey, Richard Deacon, Richard Deutsch, Gordon Huether, Joel Shapiro, Albert Paley, Anish Kapoor, Robert Hudson, Teresita Fernandez, Mildred Howard, Dorothy Lenehan, Daniel Winterich, Stephen de Staebler, Gwynn Murill, Pol Bury, Joan Brown, Larry Bell, Charles Arnoldi, Topher Delaney, Johanna Poethig, Paul D. Gibson, Ed Carpenter, Ball-Nogues Studio, Joe Goode, Ugo Rondinone, Jonathan Borofsky, John Luebtow, Pepo Pichler, Manuel Neri, Elyn Zimmerman, Bill Barrett, Arman, Dmitri Hadzi, Fritz Koenig, Paul Kos, Roger Berry, Curtis Hollenback and Topher Delaney.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Marvin Lipofsky | A Journey in Glass: at the Oakland Museum of California

Playing with Fire: Artists of the California Studio Glass Movement at the Oakland Museum

Playing with Fire: Artists of the California Studio Glass Movement

October 26, 2012–March 24, 2013

OMCA is one of more than 120 museums nationwide to mark the 50th anniversary of the studio art-glass movement in the United States. Featuring 32 works on view representing 22 artists in the Gallery of California Art, the exhibition Playing with Fire: Artists of the California Studio Glass Movement celebrates California's involvement in, and impact on, this movement that was brought to the Golden State by Marvin Lipofsky, who started the glass programs at California College of Arts and Crafts and UC Berkeley, and by Robert Fritz, who established the program at San Jose State University. Showcasing pioneer California glass artists, such as Richard Marquis, Jay Musler, Randy Strong, and Mary White, alongside the next generation of California glass artists including Oben Abright and Jaime Guerrero, the exhibition reinforces the Bay Area's prominence as a hotbed for the studio art-glass movement.
Docent Tours
Docent-led tours of Playing with Fire: Artists of the California Studio Glass Movement are offered every Sunday at 1 pm, through the end of the exhibition. Meet in front of the special exhibition in the back of the Gallery of California Art.
Made possible in part by generous support of the Oakland Museum Women’s Board, OMCA Art Guild, Art Alliance for Contemporary Glass, and Glass Alliance of Northern California. 

Sponsored by

- See more at: http://museumca.org/exhibit/playing-fire-artists-california-studio-glass-movement#sthash.BPyRuleg.dpuf

October 26, 2012 to March 24, 2013

The Oakland Museum of California, together with over 120 museums across the United States, celebrates the 50th anniversary of the American Studio Glass Movement with an exhibition of contemporary and studio glass by California artists.

Featured artists include Robert Fritz and Marvin Lipofsky, founders of glass studio programs at San Jose State University, California College of the Arts, and University of California (Berkeley). Contemporary glass on view includes work by Oben Abright, Latchezar Boyadjev, Kathleen Elliot, Bella Feldman, Jaime Guerrero, Taliaferro Jones, Michelle Knox, Susan Longini, William Morris, Jay Musler, Danny Perkins, Clifford Rainey, Cassandra Straubing, and Pamina Traylor, among others.

An exhibition catalog is available here and through the Oakland Museum of California. The exhibition was made possible in part by the Art Alliance for Contemporary Glass, the Glass Alliance of Northern California, and sponsored by the San Francisco Chronicle.

Playing with Fire: Artists of the California Studio Glass Movement

October 26, 2012–March 24, 2013

OMCA is one of more than 120 museums nationwide to mark the 50th anniversary of the studio art-glass movement in the United States. Featuring 32 works on view representing 22 artists in the Gallery of California Art, the exhibition Playing with Fire: Artists of the California Studio Glass Movement celebrates California's involvement in, and impact on, this movement that was brought to the Golden State by Marvin Lipofsky, who started the glass programs at California College of Arts and Crafts and UC Berkeley, and by Robert Fritz, who established the program at San Jose State University. Showcasing pioneer California glass artists, such as Richard Marquis, Jay Musler, Randy Strong, and Mary White, alongside the next generation of California glass artists including Oben Abright and Jaime Guerrero, the exhibition reinforces the Bay Area's prominence as a hotbed for the studio art-glass movement.
Docent Tours
Docent-led tours of Playing with Fire: Artists of the California Studio Glass Movement are offered every Sunday at 1 pm, through the end of the exhibition. Meet in front of the special exhibition in the back of the Gallery of California Art.
Made possible in part by generous support of the Oakland Museum Women’s Board, OMCA Art Guild, Art Alliance for Contemporary Glass, and Glass Alliance of Northern California. 

Sponsored by

- See more at: http://museumca.org/exhibit/playing-fire-artists-california-studio-glass-movement#sthash.BPyRuleg.dpuf

Playing with Fire: Artists of the California Studio Glass Movement

October 26, 2012–March 24, 2013

OMCA is one of more than 120 museums nationwide to mark the 50th anniversary of the studio art-glass movement in the United States. Featuring 32 works on view representing 22 artists in the Gallery of California Art, the exhibition Playing with Fire: Artists of the California Studio Glass Movement celebrates California's involvement in, and impact on, this movement that was brought to the Golden State by Marvin Lipofsky, who started the glass programs at California College of Arts and Crafts and UC Berkeley, and by Robert Fritz, who established the program at San Jose State University. Showcasing pioneer California glass artists, such as Richard Marquis, Jay Musler, Randy Strong, and Mary White, alongside the next generation of California glass artists including Oben Abright and Jaime Guerrero, the exhibition reinforces the Bay Area's prominence as a hotbed for the studio art-glass movement.
Docent Tours
Docent-led tours of Playing with Fire: Artists of the California Studio Glass Movement are offered every Sunday at 1 pm, through the end of the exhibition. Meet in front of the special exhibition in the back of the Gallery of California Art.
Made possible in part by generous support of the Oakland Museum Women’s Board, OMCA Art Guild, Art Alliance for Contemporary Glass, and Glass Alliance of Northern California. 

Sponsored by

- See more at: http://museumca.org/exhibit/playing-fire-artists-california-studio-glass-movement#sthash.BPyRuleg.dpuf

OMCA is one of more than 120 museums nationwide to mark the 50th anniversary of the studio art-glass movement in the United States. Featuring 32 works on view representing 22 artists in the Gallery of California Art, the exhibition Playing with Fire: Artists of the California Studio Glass Movement celebrates California's involvement in, and impact on, this movement that was brought to the Golden State by Marvin Lipofsky, who started the glass programs at California College of Arts and Crafts and UC Berkeley, and by Robert Fritz, who established the program at San Jose State University. Showcasing pioneer California glass artists, such as Richard Marquis, Jay Musler, Randy Strong, and Mary White, alongside the next generation of California glass artists including Oben Abright and Jaime Guerrero, the exhibition reinforces the Bay Area's prominence as a hotbed for the studio art-glass movement. - See more at: http://museumca.org/exhibit/playing-fire-artists-california-studio-glass-movement#sthash.BPyRuleg.dpuf