Larry’s List, an online register of art collectors, provides arts practitioners with an alternative way of networking and gaining information. A database containing profiles of over 3000 art collectors is available for a fee, and was compiled by a team of over twenty arts researchers who relied on over 27,000 sources to come up with the comprehensive list.
Screen capture of Larry’s List website taken on 5 October 2013. Names of collectors are only revealed after purchasing their profiles for USD 9.50 each.
Larry’s List is an online database containing profiles of art collectors from around the world. The site was launched in mid-September 2013 by Magnus Resch, who is based in both Berlin and Hong Kong. Resch’s team of 25 international art market researchers, with backgrounds in art history or art dealing, hail from twenty different countries.
“We want to bring transparency to the art market and here we focus completely on an area which has been untouched so far, which is the art collector scene,” Resch explained to Forbes.
Rajshree Pathy is an art collector and co-sponsors India Art Summit.
What is Larry’s List?
Larry’s List is geared for all arts professionals, such as gallery, art fair and auction house staff, curators, researchers and artists looking to expand their client base, grow their networks in different locales or connect with like-minded art collectors. A profile includes the collector’s name and the names of the artworks in the collection.
Speaking to Forbes, Resch states that the time has come to lift the lid on the notoriously private world of the art collector.
The art market is one of [the] last markets in the world to not show transparency. In emerging markets its (sic) interesting to see art collectors are younger and while we have difficulty researching art collectors in the western world, it’s easy to identify them in emerging markets.
To access a profile of an art collector in Larry’s List costs USD 9.50, and credits can also be purchased. However, artists are able to access the profiles for free as a way to find new collectors for their artwork. Sometime in autumn 2013, the first “Larry’s List Art Collector Report”, a sixty-page report providing details about art collectors from seventy nations, will be available to purchase for a yet-to-be-specified amount.
Art world reaction
A few weeks after the launch, there is no word yet by users or clients of the list. However, the launching generated a lot of media reaction, including stories in Art Media Agency, The Gallerist, Bloomberg and in several Russian and German publications.
Collectors in Asia
Not many resources exist containing detailed information of art collectors in Asia. However, arts journalist Patricia Chen, who writes about Asia’s art market for a wide range of publications, created the Leading Collectors of Asian Art project, which details several prominent collectors such as Uli Sigg and Dr Oei Hong Djien.
Learn more
Prior to the establishment of sites such as Leading Collectors of Asian Art and now Larry’s List, those who wanted to know more about art collectors in Asia were limited to pouring over auction reports, reading art articles and visiting Asian cities to meet the various attendees of art openings and buy art. It remains to be seen whether pay-per-view sites such as Larry’s List will augment or supplant these methods in the future.
The Mugrabi family are big art collectors based in New York.
Susan Kendzulak
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Related Topics: art collectors, art and the internet, art resources, websites on art
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