'Dealers are finding innovative ways to attract new audiences.'
'How do you compete in a landscape where small and midsize galleries falter while big names flourish? How do you gain the necessary connoisseurship to be trusted by new clients and taken seriously by your peers? How do you persuade collectors who dip in and out of different mediums, periods and parts of the world to pay attention to your carefully chosen niche? These are the kind of questions the next generation of art and design specialists are asking themselves — especially ahead of an international art fair such as Masterpiece.
“I remember the prints collector,” says Lyndsey Ingram, who started out in the Sotheby’s prints department at the age of 19. “Slightly geeky but charming, very focused. A specific kind of collector who is now few and far between — people have a much broader approach today.” From Sotheby’s, Ingram moved to the London-based prints gallery Sims Reed before setting up her eponymous dealership, concentrating on modern and contemporary prints, in 2016. The biggest challenge: “Understanding a business, which is different from understanding pictures or how to buy, sell and make a profit.'