My wife and I have been collecting contemporary art since age 21, the week I started medical school. Art has remained our principle asset and has had the highest Annual Rate of Return, approximately 27%, since 1970.

Certainly, diversification is important. And we have funds elsewhere, it’s simply that the valuation of our collection has grown at such a high rate it has been able to fuel more art purchases and even investments elsewhere as in real estate.

I knew nothing about art when we began, but I was a veteran collector at a young age: baseball cards and more. I preferred collecting things that were unique and mostly avoid editions such as prints and photos. I didn’t buy smaller works or editions because I couldn’t afford unique full size work. 

• See multiple examples;

• If we couldn’t get what we thought was the best, we passed;

• Look at other work by the artist to understand where this work fit in;

• Don’t buy if the present work was a step down.

• If you don’t your eye won’t grow;

• Don’t buy a work because someone says it’s hot;

• Everything in the end is about connoisseurship and there is a learning curve.

• Experience matters;

• Trust matters;

• Read the bio: where did they show and when;

• There needs to be an underpinning to support higher prices;

• Most art is overpriced.

• The work should have a signature quality. You see a work it can only be one artist. It’s the tough, the choice of color, how it’s shaped. Like a good poet, it has it has own sound and cadence;

• It can’t have been a work just as easily made 30 years ago. There is something new today;

• It is especially important if the work is influential on the work of other artists, as is Bruce Nauman, Warhol, Cezanne, Rothko;

• A good work of art elevates everything around it.

• The better art work seems to need to be the size and scale it is;

• Don’t buy a smaller one that may be inferior, or one unnecessarily larger. 

• Do the homework and almost always see it in person;

• You learn the most living with it.

Our third purchase was seminal:
Ellsworth Kelly, “Chatham VIII” 1970. Kelly had made 14 paintings in 1970 and 1971 and except our purchase no other one sold for seven years. I was in my medical residency and we borrowed the funds (which I don’t recommend). Our work was the central work in his 90th birthday MOMA retrospective.
Jeff Koons – Dr. J. Silver Series 50/50. 1985 – cost $4,500.

We have acquired Rothko, Warhol, Oldenburg, and what was very risky work at the time: Flavin, Paik, Andre.

Many of the acquisitions cost $20,000 and less are worth many million each. One accepts when they buy new that some will have little or no current value.
In 2002 needing to take a tax gain (to offset charitable gifts) we sold three paintings; each had cost $10,000 - $30,000. The prices achieved were many millions.

I have been an advisor to a number of art funds. LISA has differentiated itself by doing extensive homework, giving primacy to connoisseurship, and paying great attention to price.

FUNDS that purchase art based on an algorithm, which forty artists whose work have reached $500,000 or $1 million, have the greatest recent upward trajectory – tend to buy the list, not the individual work.

In time for all artists whose works become valuable, the “best” becomes worth several times more than the “lesser.” Even the same show and same size. That one factor has differentiated the value of our collection.

I knew nothing about art when we began, but I was a veteran collector at a young age: baseball cards and more. I preferred collecting things that were unique and mostly avoid editions such as prints and photos. I didn’t buy smaller works or editions because I couldn’t afford unique full size work. 

Established in 2011, MARC STRAUS is a contemporary art gallery in the Lower East Side of New York, occupying a fully reconstructed four-story historical building on Grand Street.

The gallery identifies and fosters some of the best international talent, representing 26 artists from 18 different countries. Additionally, the gallery has taken a position of showing older artists who have not for decades, or in some cases ever, been looked at in the proper light. It is this element of discovery and re-discovery, that has established MARC STRAUS as one of New York’s leading contemporary art galleries.

My wife and I have been collecting contemporary art since age 21, the week I started medical school. Art has remained our principle asset and has had the highest Annual Rate of Return, approximately 27%, since 1970.

Certainly, diversification is important. And we have funds elsewhere, it’s simply that the valuation of our collection has grown at such a high rate it has been able to fuel more art purchases and even investments elsewhere as in real estate.

I knew nothing about art when we began, but I was a veteran collector at a young age: baseball cards and more. I preferred collecting things that were unique and mostly avoid editions such as prints and photos. I didn’t buy smaller works or editions because I couldn’t afford unique full size work. 

• See multiple examples;

• If we couldn’t get what we thought was the best, we passed;

• Look at other work by the artist to understand where this work fit in;

• Don’t buy if the present work was a step down.

• If you don’t your eye won’t grow;

• Don’t buy a work because someone says it’s hot;

• Everything in the end is about connoisseurship and there is a learning curve.

• Experience matters;

• Trust matters;

• Read the bio: where did they show and when;

• There needs to be an underpinning to support higher prices;

• Most art is overpriced.

• The work should have a signature quality. You see a work it can only be one artist. It’s the tough, the choice of color, how it’s shaped. Like a good poet, it has it has own sound and cadence;

• It can’t have been a work just as easily made 30 years ago. There is something new today;

• It is especially important if the work is influential on the work of other artists, as is Bruce Nauman, Warhol, Cezanne, Rothko;

• A good work of art elevates everything around it.

• The better art work seems to need to be the size and scale it is;

• Don’t buy a smaller one that may be inferior, or one unnecessarily larger. 

• Do the homework and almost always see it in person;

• You learn the most living with it.

Our third purchase was seminal:
Ellsworth Kelly, “Chatham VIII” 1970. Kelly had made 14 paintings in 1970 and 1971 and except our purchase no other one sold for seven years. I was in my medical residency and we borrowed the funds (which I don’t recommend). Our work was the central work in his 90th birthday MOMA retrospective.
Jeff Koons – Dr. J. Silver Series 50/50. 1985 – cost $4,500.

We have acquired Rothko, Warhol, Oldenburg, and what was very risky work at the time: Flavin, Paik, Andre.

Many of the acquisitions cost $20,000 and less are worth many million each. One accepts when they buy new that some will have little or no current value.
In 2002 needing to take a tax gain (to offset charitable gifts) we sold three paintings; each had cost $10,000 - $30,000. The prices achieved were many millions.

I have been an advisor to a number of art funds. LISA has differentiated itself by doing extensive homework, giving primacy to connoisseurship, and paying great attention to price.

FUNDS that purchase art based on an algorithm, which forty artists whose work have reached $500,000 or $1 million, have the greatest recent upward trajectory – tend to buy the list, not the individual work.

In time for all artists whose works become valuable, the “best” becomes worth several times more than the “lesser.” Even the same show and same size. That one factor has differentiated the value of our collection.

I knew nothing about art when we began, but I was a veteran collector at a young age: baseball cards and more. I preferred collecting things that were unique and mostly avoid editions such as prints and photos. I didn’t buy smaller works or editions because I couldn’t afford unique full size work. 

Established in 2011, MARC STRAUS is a contemporary art gallery in the Lower East Side of New York, occupying a fully reconstructed four-story historical building on Grand Street.

The gallery identifies and fosters some of the best international talent, representing 26 artists from 18 different countries. Additionally, the gallery has taken a position of showing older artists who have not for decades, or in some cases ever, been looked at in the proper light. It is this element of discovery and re-discovery, that has established MARC STRAUS as one of New York’s leading contemporary art galleries.