Follow the Money

[Cheerful instrumental music starts] 

Quinn: Hello and welcome back to Pictorial. I am Quinn Rose. I did not go to art school, but I'm really excited about art and to bring with you all of the strange and wonderful things we've learned about for today. 

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Betty: And I'm Betty. I am also someone who did not go to art school, but I'm super enthusiastic about art and I love art. And I also would like to talk about all the strange and interesting aspects of it with Quinn.

Quinn: Yeah, so today we learned about sort of a general topic of wealth in art. And there are obviously so many different directions with this. And we're going to touch on a couple of different things about this whole strange world, on sort of the financial value of art, and how we value it, and tax evasion [laughs]. And you know, all that good stuff in the art collecting world. But I figured maybe we'd start with, what are the most expensive works of art in the world? 

Betty: Mhm! Probably a lot of you would have heard of this news, back in November of 2017, when this painting by Leonardo—Leonardo da Vinci called Salvator Mundi, it was sold for 450.3 million dollars, by Christie's, and it was bought by—and probably going to butcher his name, uh, Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, who is a Prince in Saudi Arabia. And so this was basically the most expensive painting ever sold at public auction. So the painting is attributed to Leonardo. Right now, currently, we have no idea where this painting is located. Uh, some people think it may be sitting at a freeport, which we can go into later on what that is. And some people also think it might be in a, this other Prince, Prince Mohammed bin Salman's yacht. Uh, so we don't know, but it's, it's not on for public view, at all. And so, so this definitely, it broke the record of the most expensive painting ever sold by, I think, a really, like by a lot. I actually had... now I want to pull up the list of what's the next most expensive painting. But basically this is one that probably a lot of you may have heard of. 

Quinn: Yeah. The number two was about 300 million. So that's a $150 million difference, obviously quite a lot. And it's funny cause the painting itself is... Jesus, I guess. Jesus holding a crystal ball.

Betty: Yeah. So the name Salvator Mundi means like savior of the world, and yeah, it's basically Jesus. But it's interesting, when I was reading up about it, I read—so the attribution to Leonardo is actually still disputed. Some expert think it was probably painted by one of Leonardo's students, but there's not a consensus on which one of his students did it. Like, he had a huge studio. Some people think maybe his students worked on it and he did touch ups. So parts of it were made by him. Apparently back in 1950, or in the 1950s, it wasn't attributed to Leonardo, and at one point it was sold for £45, which is equivalent to $57. [Quinn laughs] Yeah. So that person made a lot of money then. I think it was then like later attributed to his studio, so then it was worth more. But when it was finally like, mostly attributed to him, it was worth obviously even more. But yeah, but still to this day, some experts don't think it's completely done by him. So that's kind of an interesting tidbit about this piece.

Quinn: Just in this one example there are so many things of—of stuff that sort of stood out to me when I was reading about the world of expensive art. And this, first of all, the fact that we don't even know who exactly painted this perhaps, and I feel like it was—it obviously like used to be not worth a lot, and people were not valuing it, and all of a sudden it's the most expensive painting in the world. Because it was attributed to someone who is essentially one of the greatest artists to ever live, and is such a famous name that it gives it this value that people place on it, that it didn't have before even though it was exactly the same painting. And it was several orders of magnitude less money, which is so funny to think about. And also the ways that as it changes hands, it changes price because people make  different discoveries about it. Which is also a huge thing in the art market, is this idea of art flipping, and basically buying things for... either directly from the artists in the case of contemporary art, or buying things that like you've got a good eye for might be more valuable than it seems. And being able to sell it for a much larger amount of money that clearly, uh, whoever spotted this painting and thought, "wonder maybe if I should get this reevaluated about—see if somebody was wrong about who actually painted this." They were making a very smart decision. 

Betty: Yeah, for sure. And I also read that there are apparently only 20 known works by Leonardo, or 20 works that are attributed to him today. He obviously painted a lot more than that, but... so I think it's one of the other contributing factors to the huge price is that, like, Leonardo paintings that still survive to this day is pretty rare. I believe all the other, all the other 19, uh, pieces are in public collections. So they are possible for public to see. This as the only work that still remains in a private collection. So, yeah, the fact that it's... Leonardo works are rare, and then they're also all in public collections. That probably made this piece even more valuable.

Quinn: Yeah. That's like the perfect storm because I mean, that's really what makes art so expensive in the first place is because of the scarcity and this idea that it takes—it's so labor-intensive. It's become this status symbol to have works of art. And what bigger status symbol can there possibly be, of having this incredibly rare piece of art from a name that everyone knows?

Betty: Yeah, exactly. And—but the thing that is interesting with this work, particularly that, like, we don't know exactly where it is and depending on where it is, we don't really know if the buyer like bought it for investment purposes or if like, they just really liked this painting. Or they just had so much money that they didn't know where else to put it. But it is—I mean, it is a little bit—if it, like if the person did buy for investment reasons, like it is a little—like for me, that doesn't make me very happy because, you know, I like art and would like to be able to see it and appreciate it, and I would hope whoever's collecting art genuinely feels the same way, that they just really like it and are interested in the aesthetics and the backstory of it, and really just appreciate the artwork. But that's, you know, not how everybody treats art. 

Quinn: One thing that I wanted to point out briefly about this idea of like the most expensive paintings as well, is there's this article that has like the top 16 most expensive paintings, and I checked and 12 out of those top 16 were sold in the last five years. And so obviously inflation is part of that, but I think that's a really strong indication that people are paying more and more for art and that these high value art investments are getting more common. 

Betty: And it doesn't necessarily mean that people are in general are getting richer. It just means that there are a big, there's a bigger wealth gap in the world that's growing bigger and bigger because they just, because these prices are so much higher, it just means there are now a very few—or a small selection of people who can afford to pay lots of money. But there's more and more of us who are not in that bracket.

Quinn: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Betty: Oh, I should, I should've actually—I should've started off this episode with the premise of like, this topic is actually something that I don't usually like to talk about. Cause sometimes it really makes me sick. [laughs] Like, it makes me—like when I, like I work at a gallery and I'm a gallery guide there. And often people would like come in and want to talk about art and money and how much this painting's worth and this is worth. And I don't usually like to get into it because I'm like, there's just so much more... Like for me, when I look at a painting, I don't really care how much it costs. I just like to study it and look at it and appreciate it. But I think it's, there's obviously this... the art market is such a huge thing and it is, it is there and it's, it is important to acknowledge. But I do just find it really sad because art prices, as you've said, are—they've just been skyrocketing in recent years and they are so high that museums basically can't afford to buy them anymore. They have to rely on donors to make donations to galleries so that they can actually have a collection. So, um, where I work, you know, there's basically, these huge contributors who have donated large collections—and I'm very thankful for those collectors who do... you know, actually, like, who don't just like hoard it and put it in a freeport or in their private yacht, who actually will let it be on display in a public collection. So even though they obviously get a huge tax break for donating the artwork to the public collection, but still, at least, you know, at least the public can see it. So that makes me feel a little bit better. But yeah, like it's just, it is a topic that just makes me go, ugh. It just gets me angry sometimes.

Quinn: Yeah. I totally get that. And there's so much that when you really delve into it, that is frustrating because there have been changes that are relatively recent into the world that have made it such a viable option to—for the ultra rich to collect art and to have significant advantages from art investments. And one, one of the sort of landmark moments of the idea of art collecting, especially when you're looking at modern art, and contemporary art, was on specifically—October 18th, 1973, there was an auction where they put 50 pieces up and that ultimately went for 2.2 million dollars, which at the time was completely unheard of for contemporary art that they were selling. And they, this was a case of extreme art flipping where they had this... a man named Robert Scull had flipped a bunch of art, including specifically this one work that he had bought directly from the artist Robert Rauschenberg. I think he's, he's, so, he purchased the work for $900, years previously, and then it was sold for $85,000. And the artist physically confronted him and shoved him after the sale and accused him of exploiting artists, which became sort of this, this turning point. Especially as I was saying for contemporary art where suddenly there was this idea of you can flip art, and you can take contemporary art and make a profit out of it, and it is something that, that is a status symbol the same as something as one of the quote unquote great masters, like a Monet or Leonardo DaVinci piece can be. There was a critic named Barbara Rose who called it "the moment the art world collapsed."

Betty: Wow.

Quinn: And it is an, in some ways, this was a turning point when art was seen—and obviously our collecting has always existed, like patrons of art have always existed and they've always been the ultra wealthy. It's never been something that's like, of the proletariat, but through, through the uber divisions of wealth that exists in today's societies, sort of paired with other aspects of technology and tax brackets that we'll talk a little bit more, I'm sure, has really created this world where it's more extreme than ever before and it is kind of easier to exploit than ever before.

Betty: Yeah. Earlier I mentioned that, you know, like donors will donate artworks to, museums and galleries and... while, that's great, you know, it's a huge tax deduction to make charitable contributions. Like, you know, if you made like $5 million this year and you donated a artwork that's $2 million, then you technically only made $3 million this year. You can save hundreds of thousands of dollars on taxes or millions depending on how much you make and how much your artwork is worth. So a lot of the decisions to donate art isn't necessarily out of just the goodness of someone's heart. It is very tax advantageous for them. And the other thing is, a thing that collectors will do is when they donate a work of art to a museum or a public collection, they'll get it appraised. So, yeah, just say, if you say that you bought that you bought that Leonardo piece for $57, and you're not going to deduct $57. You want to see how, what, how much it's worth today. And they'll get it appraised by professional art appraisers and they'll use things like, you know, like sale records and also auction records from the past to determine that. And something that I found out that people do. And galleries do—galleries and collectors do this often—which is they, they will purposely bid up their price, like at auctions and raise the prices of like, each other's work or their own work. And so that in later on, when it gets appraised, that this value is a praise as a higher value. So when they do make the charitable contributions, it's now worth 2 million or 10 million, or 450 million. So yeah. And it's like, so auction houses are basically like, they're not regulated, so it's—so it gets manipulated a lot, and we don't really know, like you can't really know for sure who's doing it on purpose or not. And like a lot of galleries would do on their own artists to raise the value of the works of art of the artists that's in their, that they represent. Collectors will do it for artists that's in their collection. Cause another thing that a auction house can do is they can, what they can have is like a reserve price, which is basically someone can say, "I won't sell this unless it gets to $200 million." And then, someone can, people can bid on that, and if it doesn't get to $200 million and they don't sell it, but say that this artwork I bought for 5 million and people are bidding it up to like 150, so now when the appraiser goes back to the auction record, then they say, "oh, it's now worth 150 even though you didn't even sell it." So that's the thing is that they can use these types of manipulation tactics to make their art artificially be worth more. So then they can later get a bigger tax receipt, which is also disgusting. In my opinion.

Quinn: [sarcastically] Tax exploitation! Yay!

Betty: Yeah. Yeah. 

Quinn: And that's not even the only kind of exploitation there is with this kind of thing. There's also—there's a loophole in the tax code, called like-kind exchanges. And basically this was created to help protect, uh, like farmers basically. And to help them from paying excessive taxes, uh, when they were converting goods to other goods and, you know, being productive members of society. But basically this means like, if you sell an expensive painting and then you use that money to buy another painting, then you don't have to pay taxes on that money. And you can just keep kicking this can down the road... forever. So that's fun. And on one hand you might think like, well, isn't that just going like... isn't that just more money to artists though? And maybe, inadvertently, this does put some money into some artists' hands, but on the other side of this, there is... there is a real effect on sort of the kind of work that gets produced when these effects are on the market. And you have, and you have artists that are really trying to kind of cater to what the market is demanding and to cater to these very wealthy individuals who are looking for a very specific kind of thing, rather than perhaps exploring new ideas, exploring things that would do better in museums because museums are becoming less of a viable option. All of these things where it's stifling the actual creative output of contemporary artists.

Betty: For sure. And, cause the other thing I was mentioning before about museums having to rely on donors, is then what often happens is museum collections aren't really reflective of even what the mural museum curators or people at the museum, what they, what they want to reflect, it reflects the taste of their donors. And so, um, even like where I work at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Like, you know,  we want to represent like Canadian artists as diversely as possible to encompass like all different types of Canadian artists, whether it's like race or gender or, um, backgrounds and economic level. It's like, we want to represent as much as—we want to try to represent everyone. But the reality is we can't because, you know, we'll get a donate—or get donations from donors and they happen to only like one type of art, or they happen to only like one artist or like a few select artists. And you get these very homogenized collections. And you know, people come in are like, how come you only have paintings from like, you know, white males basically? And it's like, because, that's what the collectors collect. And we would rather have it be more diverse, but it's just not—it's not, it's possible, but it's just much more difficult. So that's also something that is affected. 

Quinn: That's really interesting. I never thought about that as such a big factor, but especially what you were talking about is like, if this is the primary way that museums are getting art now, then of course it's going to be so directly influenced by the taste of the collectors rather than sort of what the curators want to represent. 

Betty: Yeah. Cause it's like, even even if the curators weren't biased, and even if the museum institution itself wasn't biased—which it is—but even if it wasn't, it's like, well, this is just what our donors like. So, yeah. Like that's, it's a [sighs] it's really a shame. And that's, again, it's like the, the market as well as the galleries are reflective of like these wealthy individuals and not necessarily of everyone. 

Quinn: I think all of the things that we've been talking about so far are kind of a combination of like, some of it is just outright exploitation, and just like deliberate manipulation of art for tax benefits. And some of it is people with a lot of money who are—in some cases just genuinely trying to do something with it that's not buying another yacht or whatever it is that rich people do. And there, there is absolutely the status symbol part of it. And there's also the part of it that like sometimes, people really like art and they want to collect it or they want to make it more accessible to other people by buying it and donating to the museums. And art as something that is necessarily driven by scarcity and, and takes this kind of human labor to create. It always has, and it always will require rich patrons to support it. So I'm not necessarily saying that rich people should never buy art again, because that would definitely immediately collapse everything, all art sales. But... a part of this is just talking about the side effects that you don't necessarily think about until this is such a universal phenomenon that it ended up influencing all of these things, and the way that everyday people experience art even when they walk into a museum.

Betty: Yeah. And yeah, and I, I should, I definitely want to clarify that like, I am very appreciative of all of the donors—especially where I work— who gave us, you know, amazing works of art. It's obviously still very generous and it's obviously still, um, like we require the support of patrons and donors and people in order to, for the art world to continue to exist. But like on the topic of what you were talking about earlier about tax loopholes, I just read recently that in the US there is like, if you buy art from another state, there's another tax loophole that you can exploit basically. So if you bought art from another state, you don't have to pay the taxes in that state. You have to pay for this thing called a use tax in your own state. So your tax in your own state, whatever it is, say that it's like 9%you would have to pay it. But there are some states where they have a like a loophole where you can avoid the use tax of this state if you have a displayed in another state for more than 90 days. So Oregon, for example, it doesn't have a, a sales or use tax. So what a lot of collectors in California are doing is they'll buy art work. They'll have it in display in Oregon for three months, and then they'll take it back to California and then they pay zero tax on that. And then they would like collude with local Oregon galleries to do that. And uh, yeah, again, they'll end up paying zero taxes and that's another loophole they can exploit.

Quinn: Wow. So you're telling me... that if you want to run a gallery, you should do it in Oregon.

Betty: [laughing] Basically. Yeah. So if you want to make some extra cash or have some business on the side, or have some art displayed for free, then do it in Oregon. So the other thing actually, so the other thing I mentioned earlier are these, these tax havens basically called freeports and they're these.... ginormous temperature controlled warehouses that you can basically just put art in for tax free until you like take it out, which then you have to pay taxes. But, um, so there's one in Geneva, Switzerland, and then there's also one in Delaware. There's ones like all over the place. Like what some people do is they will buy a work of art, put it in the freeport so that's tax free right now. And then they'll resell it to somebody else. And so, but the art stays in the freeport. So the art technically changed hands between one collector to another. But physically it didn't go anywhere. It stayed in the freeport. So then for the next person, it's still tax free. So this is where, like for people who do this, they obviously don't care about the art. They just care—they just use it as an investment. So then it's just like this transaction, but the art doesn't actually ever leave anywhere, any of these warehouses. And I don't, I don't really, I've never been to one of these places, obviously. I don't really know what it looks like, but in my mind, like when I first heard about this, I just pictured that scene at the end of Indiana Jones. That big warehouse just full of boxes. Like that's what I just think about. I'm like, it's probably just that like, no one ever gets to see the art. 

Quinn: It's actually wild how many of these strategies just involve kind of kicking taxes down the road and sort of trusting that you're just not going to be the person stuck with a hot potato at the end?

Betty: Pretty much.

Quinn: I guess they can just go on indefinitely or until they change the tax code and you better not be holding the painting when that happens, I guess.

Betty: it is just so interesting and how, yeah. How like people are, are using art as like a place to hold their money and yeah, just trying to avoid as many taxes as possible.

Quinn: One thing that I want to dive into a little bit is... I read some about the change of the art market in sort of the Great Recession of 2008, which had a big influence on specifically sales of contemporary art and modern art. It fell by more than two thirds from 2008 to 2009, but that... the sort of mainstay our investments of like the, the quote unquote great masters and all of that continued to to keep their value and and pretty quickly grow value again, even though there was this economic downturn happening, which I find very interesting, is like art is such a hugely profitable field for so many people and contemporary art has joined that. But in times of economic distress, contemporary art gets dropped and then it's back to, no, no, let me keep my Rembrandts and you can take everything made in the last hundred years.

Betty: Yeah. It's almost like how when, yeah, I think it was when the recession hit, a lot of people went to hold onto gold. Like gold prices stayed steady or something. So I guess it's like something old that people just decided to... it was a more conservative investment. I don't know. 

Quinn: It's so funny to me because all value is subjective ultimately. Besides, you know, does this literally provide a basic human need, it's pretty much just how much do we decide something is worth. And art is, is basically the pinnacle of that, but at the same time, there's this idea of, "oh no, a Rembrandt will always hold its value." Because it's so old and so universally valued that it's going to be this incredible piece of art even if we took put the Jackson Pollocks over in a corner. And there's no real logical reason why. But I feel that I kind of emotionally feel the same way, where if someone like offered me the choice of which one would you pick as a personal financial investment, well I'd be like, obviously the Rembrandt.

Betty: Yeah. I wonder if it has to do with, cause I know last time, like we were talking about postcards and I mentioned that the most expensive postcard, which sold for like 48,000 pounds or something like that, happened to be the oldest pole known postcard. So it's like, I guess—I think there is a part of art and collecting where the older something is, the higher its value is just because of the nature of how old it is.

Quinn: Yeah, and that is true because at some point it's also a historical artifact as well as an aesthetic piece.

Betty: Yeah. So that's, that's more, more likely the reason why some of the older pieces hold their values for longer than the more contemporary pieces.

Quinn: I guess. Just bury the painting in your backyard with your gold.

Betty: Yeah.

Quinn: Don't do that.

Betty: Yeah. That'll destroy the painting a little bit.

Quinn: And the other sort of modern update about this that I was reading is the way that millennials are experiencing art flipping. So if you think of millennials, of people who are like roughly 23, 24 to 40ish, at this point, 85% of millennials said they were very, or somewhat likely to sell art in the next year. So they're, they're much more likely to see it as a financial asset as opposed to 41% of Gen X collectors and 24% of Baby Boomers. And these are people who have purchased art, it's not just like 85% of all millennials are likely to sell art in the next year. That'd be wild.

Betty: Yeah it's like, I thought millennials were poor because...

Quinn: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But no no, to of the people who have art, they are much more likely to view it as something that they are attempting to flip, that they're attempting to sell and see as this kind of financial asset. Rather than people of older generations, which I think is really funny. And I'm not sure how much of that is maybe there are a lot fewer millennials who have arts because they are younger., they've had less time to accrue wealth and, and therefore art. So maybe, it's just that the millennials who can afford buying art are just all real high flyers?

Betty: It's possible.

Quinn: Yeah. But I mean the, the disparity between 85% of millennials and 24% of baby boomers is just huge. And they also said that they are more likely to kind of consider a work's value and the market rather than just the aesthetics of it when they're deciding what to buy, which honestly, I think makes a lot of sense. I think these are—millennials came of age in a more materialistic world, in a more financially unstable world. And so I think it's only natural for these people to be—these people... me, I guess? To be viewing these kinds of things as financial assets, perhaps even more than they are aesthetic choices. But it's also kind of sad when we're talking about all of these things and there's, we're kind of shaking our fists at the sky and everything, but it seems like it's going the wrong direction.

Betty: Yeah. That really surprises me, that statistic, because I just associate like millennials with not having wealth. But then, then again, obviously there are going to be select individuals who are millennials, who do have money and places to spend them. And so maybe it's like a small sample size because the amount of wealthy millennials are so small, and if you happen to be a millennial who has a lot of money, you are more likely to, yeah. More likely to invest in art. But yeah, it is a very surprising statistic. Wow, when I hear that. 

Quinn: Yeah. Looking at the specific data, so this is from the 2018 US Trust Insights on Wealth and Worth—that is the full official title from the Bank of America. And I'm not seeing this specific number of millennials that they surveyed, but it comes from a survey of 892, quote unquote, high net worth individuals. A sentence I hate, but they specify that quote unquote, quotas were established by age and investible asset size to ensure sufficient representation of groups of interest. So they're saying, trust us, we surveyed enough millennials.

Betty: Okay, well, at least millennials who have a over $3 million of investible assets. So there are at least some who have that much, who are millennials.

Quinn: Apparently so.

Betty: Yeah, it is interesting how there are so many who are investing in our art... maybe like, I guess in a way that's kind of good. Cause like one thing like we do at the, art gallery that I work at, like we do struggle with is attracting younger audiences. Like a lot of our members, a lot of our visitors are like 50 or above. And like this year, like we're also, we have these campaigns and like discounted tickets. We actually have this program where if you're under 25, it's actually free all year. So yeah. 

Quinn: [gasps] Wow! I gotta come to Toronto.

Betty: Yeah! Come to Toronto, come to the art gallery of Ontario. It's, yeah. So we're actually attracting a lot more like of a younger audience that way, but it, it has been like much more difficult to attract younger people to come to museums and galleries. And so I guess in a way it's kind of good that at least these, we have, some wealthy millennials who can continue to be the donors and contributors also of  our institutions. 

Quinn: It's a glass half empty glass, half full kind of situation.

Betty: Yeah, exactly. I think for—yeah it is difficult to talk about cause it's like on the one hand it is anger inducing. But on the other hand, it is what drives the art market and what ultimately in a way determines what ends up in collections and what ends up in museums. And, um, but I do think it's an important thing to keep in mind is that like these art works you see, are not necessarily—even in museums and galleries, are not necessarily like the best. It's just, it just happens to be like what a wealthy collectors like or, or feel are valuable to them. And that's kind of like how the art market is shaped. 

Quinn: Yeah and also on one hand, these wealthy collectors are driving the purchase of art, even if they have other effects that aren't so great. But on the other hand, if they were doing less tax evasion, we'd have more tax money to fund artists.

Betty: Yeah. This is true. So we have to also have more to fund, you know, art. institutions and museums.

Quinn: There's a lot of moving parts. 

Betty: Exactly. 

Quinn: You might not have an answer to this question, but I wonder if you have any kind of insight as someone who works in an art gallery... Is there anything that kind of the average person can do to encourage works of—certain kinds of works of art or even like specific artists to be put into at galleries and museums? Either through like speaking to the museum or is there any way to sort of pressure donors directly? Like how does that work? 

Betty: Yeah, that's a good question. And I don't really have a... I don't think, I don't know if I have a good answer to that, but on the one hand, like I know when we have shows, we always collect data on like how popular a show was. So like how many people attended, what the ticket sales are, how long people spend at the exhibition. And we also even collect survey feedback, or they'll interview people who are walking through the galleries about the shows. And so we always have, a database of like how popular an exhibition did. So I guess like in a way in to, to promote like some artists is like, if you see a show of an artist that you really like and you think deserve more attention, is I would say go to the show and go do that survey and say, "I really liked it and it was 10 out of 10. And that I do want more of this artist." Yeah. So like for instance, a couple of years ago, we had a Georgia O'Keeffe show at the AGO, and I love her work, and she happens to be the female artist who has sold—who has the highest auction record, which is 44.4 million dollars for her painting of a white flower, I forget the name of the painting. But basically, uh, so it's—even though it's the highest, I was actually earlier scrolling through that most—list of the most expensive painting, just to see if I can find the Georgia O'Keeffe work, and it's not even on it. I think she's probably number, like. 78 or something like that in like the most expensive ever sold. So, but anyway, that show ended up doing really well, I think. And, you know, lots of people came out, lots of people, people said that like, they loved the work. So, and that, those statistics help to determine in the future what type of shows that we're gonna do. Because even though, you know, we, again, we'd like to be more diverse. We still have to make money cause only like a third of our, revenue comes from tax dollars. So we still have to make money on these shows in order to have the museum continue as a business. So, but yeah, like when a show does well, there's more likely—we'll most likely do another O'Keefe show in the future or something similar. So I guess that's really, or one of the few direct ways you can advocate for an artist. And other than that, it's just if, you know someone who's really rich and encourage them to collect... more, uh, more of artists that you think deserve more attention.

Quinn: Two strategies. Deploy them as best as you can.

Betty: Exactly. 

Quinn: Well, thank you for listening to this episode of Pictorial and supporting us with your ears and your time. If you want to follow us on Twitter or Instagram, we're there @PictorialPod where we post the images that we talked about in this state's episode. Kind of low on the images and high on the tax credits for this episode, but they'll still be some fun stuff up on those. If you want to find me on Twitter, Instagram, I'm @aspiringrobotfm on both.

[Cheerful instrumental music starts]

Betty: And if you want to find me on the internet, I'm at @articulationsV on Twitter and on YouTube you can find me at Articulations.

Quinn: And there's also a Google form in the show notes if you have any topic you'd like to suggest that we cover in the future. Thanks for listening and go support art. 

Betty: Thank you for listening, art enthusiasts.

[Music fades out]

Quinn: It can exist as a status symbol, the same as sort of like a Leonardo... DaVinci. I almost said Leonardo DiCaprio. [laughing]

Betty: [laughing] That's okay.

Quinn: Let me say that sentence again.