Thursday, December 04, 2008

New York Art Exchange: myartspace launches e-commerce platform

Myartspace.com, the premier online social network for the art world has announced the implementation of e-commerce capabilities. The announcement of the New York Art Exchange occurred during the Bridge Art Fair in Miami. Members of the myartspace community will have several options for the type of store they wish to manage. Artists, gallerists, collectors, and buyers can benefit from what NYaxe.com has to offer. More to come...

Links of Interest:

www.myartspace.com
www.nyaxe.com

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi

Just seeking some clarification regarding the art exchange, as I am yet to understand some of how it works...

1) what would be the benefit of being represented by a "gallery" via the exchange as opposed to representing yourself? As there does not appear to be any individual gallery profiles on this site, how does being attached to a gallery assist the artist at all? Isn't this just throwing another player (hence another commission) into the equation?

2) It is not clear how art work ends up in the "curated" section of the site, is this currently functioning? how is this work selected?

3) How does a potential buyer view an artist's individual profile if they seek more information on them, or is the site deliberately meant to display only info about individual works of art?

Appreciate any response to these......thanks

Balhatain said...

Hi anon,

Individual artists can place work for sell on NYaxe and brick & mortar galleries can as well if they wish. A collector can place work for sell as well if he or she desires.

As for brick & mortar galleries with myartspace and NYaxe accounts, the benefit for them is that they can explore ecommerce in a relatively inexpensive way on a site that is respected in the art community.

Most brick & mortar galleries do not have ecommerce options on their official websites. Due to the state of the economy many are looking into alternative options for selling art. NYaxe is one of those options.

Gallerist have more advanced stores and have the option to "represent" other artists work found in a nyaxe store by making a formal request. The gallerist would propose a representation to an artist through the nyaxe messaging system. He would propose a price that the artist would receive upon sale of the work, and a shipping arrangement. In some cases they may leave the work with the artist and simply represent them online. Either way, the art listing is immediately transferred from the artists store to the gallery store. We expect more galleries to develop an physical and online presence.

I assume you are basically asking why there are two sites, myartspace and NYaxe. We debated this issue quite a bit. We decided that we wanted to see the social network, myartspace, continue to flourish as a great place for free expression, unlimited uploading of work, and a healthy balance of artists, collectors, gallerists, educators, students and art appreciators. NYaxe is more strictly for the buying and selling of art.

The New York Art Exchange is highly focused on providing a market for selling and buying art, and so the items for sale are likely to be amongst the best people have to offer, and the buyers are there not only to look and appreciate, but to purchase. We see this nyaxe personal store more like a Chelsea Gallery. People can wander in to admire, but many will be on a mission to buy. We think the overwhelming majority of members will co-exist between the two sites as there are ways the sites are tightly linked.