Wise to Art

According to Alexa, artnet is Internet’s most visited art portal. Confirming its role as a global player, artnet brings both breaking and in-depth news about the international art market while offering online subscription services to past and present auction prices in venues across the world. The website provides furthermore extensive international gallery listings, artist monographs, auction-house news and special reports on art market events and trends.

Although artnet may appear as a universal forum dedicated to art, its emphasis is clearly on providing an art exchange platform. Thanks to intelligent and up to date cross-referencing between past and upcoming auctions and current gallery offers, the collector is given a formidable tool to be kept up to date with his collection’s market position and to be alerted to works coming up for sale. The vendors, for their part, are served with permanent and global visibility for their merchandise. Recently artnet added an in-house on-line auction facility to its already impressive gamut of broker services. Auxiliary to the world of fine art, artnet’s occupations touch as well design, antiques and the decorative arts. For a brief history of artnet, see Wikipedia’s article.

On a market with global reach, the duple transatlantic quarters of artnet’s working structure gives the company its competitive edge. It’s noticeable that the site is offered in English (most visited) and German (original) versions only, leaving, in particular, the world’s traditionally third (now fourth after the UK, the US and China) ‘art market power’, France, in the cold.

Quality in website design, graphics and functionality is artnet’s key solution for handling the wealth of information proposed. Artnet’s rational and artful solutions contribute greatly to the platform’s upscale image.

Home page

Artnet’s choice of subdued reds and greys gives the site its choice appearance and the lay-out couldn’t be more classical. Far from the brash and complicated design of some competitors, clarity reigns on this model-book home page, boasting an impressive Google page rank 7. The top bar divisions, announcing the crucial databases as well as the more peripheral editorial services, are reiterated on the home page as separate headings with brief and often illustrated introductions. Decorative arts and design do not have top bar positions but are introduced on the page itself.

If top bar position can be judged important, the present ordinal sequence reads: ‘artists/artworks past auction prices database’ – ‘galleries’/dealer’s works for sale database’ – ‘auction houses upcoming auctions database’; after which are placed the informative section: ‘subscription conditions for the price database’ and finally the editorial services ‘market trends’ – ‘market events’ – ‘ artnet magazine’. Remarkable is that the recent ‘artnet online auction’ facility has gotten the primary position at the left on the top bar, what might be an indication of artnet’s own idea of the potential of this feature.

The price database

At the origin of the artnet concept, the price database is not unique to artnet and features roughly the same set of options that is found in all similar sites today. Our impression of artnet’s artist database is that lesser known (less traded) artists are unlikely to be listed; what seems normal for a site dedicated to the top-tier market. The cross-indexing of the price database with works currently selling in galleries and auction houses is the prime feature.

The gallery and auction house listings

Artnet offers select art professionals the choice between a free basic listing or a paying member presentation, the latter with mentioned specialization, company detail and hyperlinks. The rather pricy periodical fee for member status is another sifting mechanism that helps attracting only high-end user profiles.

The editorial services

Commissioned:
Artnet offers paying tailor-made analyses of high-profile artists under the denomination ‘market trends’. Under ‘events’, member galleries and auction houses have the opportunity to market their upcoming exhibitions or sales events.

Artnet magazine and newsletter
Artnet publishes its own online magazine with traditional magazine-style content and offers a subscription service to a free periodic e-newsletter.

Conclusion:

Judged premier site among those reviewed with similar content (artnet, artprice, findartinfo, artfact, akoun), artnet is remarkable for its aesthetics, ease of use and quality content. In our opinion it’s an indispensable portal for art professionals and collectors acting in the upper regions of the art market.