Inside Glenn Fuhrman’s 'Top 200' Art Collection | Masterworks

it was a very long time before I really even thought of myself as a collector and you know I still not even exactly sure what that word means at some point in time I think after you know I accumulated a certain amount of Art and and really recognized that it represented a significant percentage of my quote unquote net worth you know I guess I just started to be aware of it hello I'm Glenn Ferman I'm an art collector from New York [Music] City and I grew up in a suburb of New York um my parents were not of you know the means to be collectors but I do remember going to museums I remember we had some Prince at home we had um some Alex cat's prints we had a David Hackney poster I think we had some Roy lickstein posters um so I definitely I remember I had a great Royal lickstein poster in my bedroom that's I remember said Aspen winter Jazz and it was a great it was probably to the right of the farro faucet poster that everybody had back then I came to the art World a little bit from a a different perspective I went to college to study Finance I went to the Wharton business school at University of Pennsylvania and as an 18-year-old getting ready to set my classes up I decided to sign up for art history 101 first semester freshman year and really just fell in love with history ended up graduating from whorton undergrad as a finance major but in a very unusual way only ended up taking three Finance classes and 11 art history classes I worked at Goldman for 10 years it was a great career and in 1998 I left to co-found MSD Capital which is a wealth management firm for Michael Dell the founder of Dell computers did that for 23 years and started a new firm called true Arrow partners and we're building essentially a wealth man management platform for families from all over the world specifically in alternative asset classes I mean I'm on the board of the MoMA and I'm on the American Board of the tape Museum I mean I have relationships with all the galleries thankfully um of course some I have a better relationship than others but I try to have a good working relationship with all of them because they all have great [Music] artists I saw the work at the time and just immediately loved it and you know this is a great example where we got to know Nicholas a little bit and we ultimately worked with him on a fantastic Exhibition at the flag Art Foundation he did a masterful uh full installation curated show of his work as well as other artists celebrating the art of pastel centuries of work was represented in the show not just the current day but going all the way back to dega and Mary Cassat and um you know this work was part of that experience of working with Nicholas on the show and ultimately being able to buy a great work I I absolutely love this work and love the the ri the ribbon it's not a specific person obviously it's uh you know kind of a Fantastical image in some ways but there's something really beautiful about it to me you know on the weekends and in in my free time I would just go to art galleries all the time time and that was really how it all started I just loved being around the art I loved meeting the artists and then once I started making some money you know I just basically was spending essentially all my money on Art you know from the very beginning I lived in a one room studio apartment for8 and a half years after I graduated from from college and I think I at one point probably had 50 to 75 works of art in that one one Studio space so I had a lot of art there um I I was just buying things that I loved I I pretty much met the artists almost all the time was only buying Contemporary Art so things that spoke to me about the world that that I was living in at the time and that's pretty much been the the consistent theme through my collection so I kind of had this realization that I couldn't afford to buy very inexpensive art which sounds like an oxymoron but you know I was worried that if for some reason you know I ended up losing my job if I had bought a bunch of inexpensive by artists that were not very well known they wouldn't have a lot of value if I had to sell them literally had to sell them but if I bought artists that were already established at least if I had to sell them I could get 50 cents on the dollar or something and thankfully I never had to sell anything but that was part of the philosophy so I did start buying a little bit more established artists early we did buy this at auction and we bought it after sbly had already passed away it was already a fact that he was a master and that he was a great artist so it wasn't like we just discovered him um so you know it's not just primary Market works that go up and value a lot this was certainly something that I think has appreciated again not that we focus on that but we we we we love this painting it's in our bedroom we literally would look at it every day in the morning and every night we go to bed and um we had a personal relationship with Sai as well so that was something that also was an additional [Music] connection there was a large red Rector that that a dealer had called this was on the secondary Market um and said hey Glenn I have this great you know red RoR and you know I went to see it and it was spectacular I I loved it and then of course you know unfortunately he told me the price and I'm like that's just above where I can spend right now I just I I can't do it but I guess he he he maybe thought I could I don't know uh and at the time he said well I'll tell you what I will deliver the painting to your living room room tomorrow live with it for a week and if you don't like it and you don't want to keep it I'll take it back but worst case you get to live with this great painting for a week so you can tell first of all it's a very different art environment I don't know that that's has to first of all they're not doing that with RoR today but they were doing that back then apparently anyway he delivered the painting to my apartment I lived with it for a week it was amazing I just loved it and uh you know I did whatever I could and I ended up buying the painting and it was uh it was definitely a reach uh at the time but it was uh you know it's still hanging in my house and I love it uh as much today as I did at that time uh it was a very long time before I really even thought of myself as a collector and you know I still not even exactly sure what that word means um at some point in time I think after you know I accumulated a certain amount of Art and and really recognized that it represented a significant percentage of my quote unquote net worth you know I guess I just started to be aware of it but I haven't really sold any art so I've been kind of a one-way Street for a long time I mean I'm an investor professionally so you know to me my brain is kind of Walled off that my investing side is more on the financial markets and my art side is not about investing um you know by accident to some extent my art collecting has resulted in probably great investment results so I think the Dynamics of art as an S Class do appear to be very strong it does seem that people all over the world and museums all over the world are interested in buying the same types of art by the same artists and so the demand picture is very robust for art globally and the supply of that art is relatively constrained right I mean a great artist may make five to 20 Works a year depending on who they are and there's more than 5 to 20 people per year that want to buy one um I I respect Masterworks having taken such a datadriven approach to their own analysis and you know I'm an investor in Masterworks I'm sitting here because I'm affiliated with Masterworks to be very clear um but you know I've been very impressed how Masterworks has used that datadriven approach to decide what works to buy and put on the platform which I think they've done very very successfully it's not just three people on a committee saying let's buy that red painting it's more the data saying no let's buy that share Hugh from this period of time for this reason and that I think is very compelling what they've done I mean it's much more Global today for sure and so there's you know a super sought after artist and they're considering who to you know sell the paintings to now it's not just a bigger group but it's a Global Group it's somebody from Asia it's somebody from the West Coast somebody from from Australia it's somebody from the UK it's several people from France so it's it's just it's much more competitive to get access to the best work which is good for everybody in some ways well I mean I think the biggest issue with art as an asset class is you can't buy what you want when you want it you can see a painting and say oh I really wish I could buy that and you just can't cuz it's not for sale and on the other side you might say okay I own this thing now it's time to sell I want to sell it and there may not be a buyer at the right price at the right moment for you just to to to sell it so the buy and the sell are both Limited in that regard so I think you do have to be very patient you have to make sure you're buying something that you really like and then you have to sell it when you have the opportunity to sell it at the right [Music] price the flag Art Foundation was started about 15 years ago um and the idea behind the flag R Foundation was a place to show cont contemporary art really specifically not from my collection we put on exhibitions of great contemporary works for the most part um but they're usually borrowed just like any Museum would borrow works from all over the place and we have different curators all the time so there's always a different view a vision that's being shown at flag and it's for me it's just a great way to work with artists to work with curators and to live with amazing art that I don't have to buy we've had Shaquille O'Neal curate an amazing show for us and lots of different curators from all over the world have have curated for us and artists we've also had great artists uh have curated shows with us including Jim Hodes and Eric fishell among others and it's it's just it's just been tremendous fun and life enriching for me for sure I mean I think just seeing as much art as possible going to museums going to art fairs which is a great place to see a lot of Contemporary Art at once want just seeing what you like what you don't like I mean I find that it's equally valuable to see things I don't like cuz then I know when I like something that I really do like it because I've seen a lot of things that I don't like um I love going to galleries to see shows but and the art is not appealing to me because it's just one less thing I have to you know worry about to some extent so it's you know and then when you go to a show and you love it all it's fantastic so yeah know there there's lots of great great art out there for sure

Channel: Masterworks

Views: 16,766

Keywords: Masterworks, Art Investing, Fine Art, Art Investment, Art Market, Investing in Art, Blue-Chap Art, Art as an Asset, Art Market Trends, Contemporary Art, Art History, Art Collecting, Art Auction, Famous Artists, Art Curation, Art portfolio, Alternative investments, Art Appreciation, Art Finance, alt investing, Art Collector, Collector home, Art Collection, masterworks art investment, masterworks review, masterworks art

Id: aW8kHo2EDro

Length: 11min 31sec (691 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 23 2023