Why Now More Than Ever Collectors Need to Meet the Artists

Why Now More Than Ever Collectors Need to Meet the Artists

Why Now More Than Ever Collectors Need to Meet the Artists

By Liz Wallen

In an era when art is often treated like a stock portfolio, it is no surprise that something has gone missing, something real, human, and vital. The connection. The story. The reason you even care about the piece in the first place.

Collectors used to meet artists. They would visit their studios, talk over coffee, share meals, sometimes become lifelong friends. But in recent decades, the art world’s machinery, fueled by fairs, advisors, auction houses, and the cult of exclusivity, has increasingly separated the maker from the buyer. Artworks began to feel like anonymous trophies, divorced from the labor, emotion, and intent behind them. And with that distance came something more toxic: flipping.

When art is reduced to asset class behavior, the personal connection evaporates. Buyers do not feel bad reselling a piece six months later, because they never felt anything to begin with. It is just inventory.

But art is not meant to be inventory. It is meant to live with you.

The paintings on your walls, if you let them, become more than decoration. They stare back at you every morning, pick up the energy of your dinner parties, sit in the background during family arguments, holidays, and new beginnings. They become part of the rhythm of your life. They earn their place like family photos. But for that to happen, there has to be a deeper reason you brought it home.

That is where meeting the artist matters.

Not at an opening. Openings are often loud and rushed, and meeting the artist there is typically a quick handshake and a photo moment at best. It can feel performative, transactional, and oddly impersonal. You might exchange a few words, smile for the camera, and walk away with a drink in hand, but that is not connection.

To really meet an artist means going beyond the opening night gloss. It means hearing them speak about their process in a quiet room. Seeing the space where they work. Asking a real question and hearing a real answer. That kind of interaction changes how you see the work forever. You collect not just the object but the journey behind it. That is what roots art in the soul instead of the spreadsheet.

Too much of the current system prioritizes transaction over connection. Galleries can act as gatekeepers, and art fairs, while exciting, often leave little room for depth. The solution is not another pop up, not a glossy booth, not another auction record. It is face to face conversations. It is showing up. It is meeting the people who make the work.

And not just artists and collectors, generations too. The art world has become increasingly siloed by age. Younger artists and patrons hustle in scrappy new collectives. Older collectors and board members often operate in more established circles. But we need each other. Deeply.

The older generation carries institutional memory, long term perspective, and the experience of watching artists grow over decades. The younger generation brings risk taking energy, curiosity, and cultural fluency with what is emerging now. When those two groups meet, not in theory but in rooms, studios, backyards, living rooms, something rare happens. Legacy meets relevance.

In that space, art becomes more than commerce or content. It becomes connection.

So maybe the answer to the art world’s current unraveling is not innovation. Maybe it is something much older. The act of showing up. Meeting the artist. Staying for a drink. Looking beyond the resale potential and into the life beating behind the work.

Because when you meet the artist, you do not just buy art.

You build a relationship with the work, with the world, and with a version of yourself that remembers why this ever mattered to begin with.