A consummate insider demystifies the nebulous cosmos of buying and selling art.
Illustrated in full color.
While most who read this volume will have visited a museum, few will have gained entry into the inner sanctums of art appreciation. Guggenheim has lived her life in those occluded quarters -- she has a doctorate in art history from Columbia and has worked at Christie's, Sotheby's, and the Whitney Museum of American Art -- and so is ideally positioned to furnish a backstage pass into the art world.
ART WORLD is eclectically structured: it is one part instructional guide and one part work of history, all written in an almost confessional tone, exposing closely guarded secrets.
ART WORLD covers a broad spectrum of subjects, including buying art at an auction, appraising a work as an investment, framing a piece owned, and deciding what to do with the treasure if the collector falls out of love with it or divorces. Sprinkled throughout the volume are historical vignettes -- always insightful and expressed in breezy, unpretentious prose. The world of art turns out to be as bewilderingly complex as it is delightful: 'Making your way through the art world is like picking wild mushrooms: it's not always easy to differentiate what's okay from what s deadly.'
