An Inside View of Art Collecting with Suzanne Gyorgy

02/20/24 • 36 min

Suzanne Gyorgy is a partner at Emigrant Bank Fine Art Finance. Prior to joining Emigrant in 2023, Suzanne was a Managing Director and Global Head of Citi Private Bank Art Advisory & Finance for more than two decades where she had a bird’s eye view on the art buying patterns of some of Americas most active and passionate collectors. Earlier in her career, Suzanne served as the Director of PaineWebber (UBS) Art Gallery in New York where she worked closely with Don Marron, one of the most dedicated and admired art collectors of his era. In this episode Suzanne and Michael discusses the following:

Reports in the press of a slowing art market tend to affect more collectors on the margins rather than those in the mainstream with long term visions of filling gaps in their collections.
The downside of the increasing financialization of the art market is that “sometimes people are following the numbers and not the art.” The upside, however, is the creation of art indexes like Mei Moses, and other financial analysis of the art market, have made bankers more comfortable lending against art.
Suzanne shares her impressions of Art Basel Miami Beach 2023, and how it felt like a return to better days in terms of a more deliberative and collaborative art buying and a lessened presence of smart phones, allowing dealers to reprise their traditional role as educators.
Now that the Pandemic has passed, collectors have become focused again on seeing the art in person, newly aware of what can get lost when seeing a work only from a computer screen.
In the private banking world, art is generally considered a more stable asset to lend against when compared to the daily volatility of equity markets. But in art market downturns, press reports of falling auction prices, sometimes overstated, can disrupt that thinking.
Michael and Suzanne discuss when buying art as an investment, an investor must think like a connoisseur, buying with her eyes and not with her ears.
Suzanne addresses the impact of higher interest rates on art collectors, and the current level of buying from both the Chinese and Baby Boomer segments post Pandemic.
In the process of answering the Jetstreams Grab and Run Question, Suzanne also explains what it was like to have been working as a Registrar at MoMA preparing Picasso’s Guernica for its historic return to Spain.

Find Suzanne Gyorgy at:

www.emigrantbankfineart.com

X: @sg07928

IG: @suzannegyorgy

LinkedIn: Suzanne Gyorgy
Find Michael Plummer at:

IG: @michaeljplummer

LinkedIn: Michael Plummer
Find Christie’s Education at:
www.Education.Christies.com

IG: @Education.Christies

Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast for free from Apple or Spotify.

Recorded at The Newsstand Studios in Rockefeller Center.
Thank you for listening.

Reports in the press of a slowing art market tend to affect more collectors on the margins rather than those in the mainstream with long term visions of filling gaps in their collections.
The downside of the increasing financialization of the art market is that “sometimes people are following the numbers and not the art.” The upside, however, is the creation of art indexes like Mei Moses, and other financial analysis of the art market, have made bankers more comfortable lending against art.
Suzanne shares her impressions of Art Basel Miami Beach 2023, and how it felt like a return to better days in terms of a more deliberative and collaborative art buying and a lessened presence of smart phones, allowing dealers to reprise their traditional role as educators.
Now that the Pandemic has passed, collectors have become focused again on seeing the art in person, newly aware of what can get lost when seeing a work only from a computer screen.
In the private banking world, art is generally considered a more stable asset to lend against when compared to the daily volatility of equity markets. But in art market downturns, press reports of falling auction prices, sometimes overstated, can disrupt that thinking.
Michael and Suzanne discuss when buying art as an investment, an investor must think like a connoisseur, buying with her eyes and not with her ears.
Suzanne addresses the impact of higher interest rates on art collectors, and the current level of buying from both the Chinese and Baby Boomer segments post Pandemic.
In the process of answering the Jetstreams Grab and Run Question, Suzanne also explains what it was like to have been working as a Registrar at MoMA preparing Picasso’s Guernica for its historic return to Spain.

Find Suzanne Gyorgy at:

www.emigrantbankfineart.com

X: @sg07928

IG: @suzannegyorgy

LinkedIn: Suzanne Gyorgy
Find Michael Plummer at:

IG: @michaeljplummer

LinkedIn: Michael Plummer
Find Christie’s Education at:
www.Education.Christies.com

IG: @Education.Christies

Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast for free from Apple or Spotify.

Recorded at The Newsstand Studios in Rockefeller Center.
Thank you for listening.

Previous Episode

How to Collect Art with Magnus Resch

Magnus is a leading art market economist, entrepreneur, teacher of art management at Yale University, and a best-selling author. His latest book, published by Phaidon is How to Collect Art, an excellent guide to participating in the art market for both those new to the market, as well as seasoned collectors. From working with galleries and art advisors to attending art fairs and auctions, the book demystifies the art world and instructs on how to navigate it. In this episode we discuss:

In an opaque art market with a lack of public transaction records, how Magnus has relied on surveys of key market participants to support his conclusions.
Through his research, Magnus asserts that the number of active buyers is actually small, and shrinking, with only 6000 collectors spending over 100K per annum.
Magnus points to the most recent numbers from the Art Basel | UBS Art Market Report that indicate 1% of property sold in the Fine Art market comprises 60% of transaction value. It reflects an enormous bifurcation of the market where activity at the top is its principal driver now, causing a great waning of it at the lower and mid-levels.
The purpose of How to Collect Art is to solve this problem by converting some of the tens of thousands of mega art fair visitors into new buyers, to re-invigorate the lower and middle segments of the art market.
Magnus takes the position that art is a good investment only at the highest end of the market. He explains how art indexes work and the role of survivorship bias.
Magnus proposes an alternate reason for buying art rather than as an investment, one that he practices himself – which is to support artists and galleries, the economy of the middle to lower end of the art market; to enjoy the social, cultural and emotional benefits of participating in that robust ecosystem.
Taking a deep dive into each of the segments of the art market, Magnus describes how each of them work by providing detailed chapters on how to engage with each of them: artists, galleries, art fairs, auctions & art advisors.
Magnus and Michael discuss Case Studies throughout the book with various art industry insiders that give real insights, such as Christie’s CEO, Guillaume Cerruti, notable collectors Rosa and Carlos de la Cruz, and the artist Tavares Strachan.
For Jetstreams “Grab and Run Question” where we ask our guests as well as our listeners to describe a work of art in the museum of their own mind, one that they value above all others and why that is. Magnus provides an inspiring answer related to his childhood in the German Alps.

Find Magnus at:
www.magnusresch.com
X: @magnusresch
IG: @magnusresch
LinkedIn: Magnus Resch
Facebook: @mresch
Find Michael Plummer at:
IG: @michaeljplummer
LinkedIn: Michael Plummer
Find Christie’s Education at:
www.Education.Christies.com
IG: @Education.Christies

Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast for free from Apple or Spotify.

Recorded at The Newsstand Studios in Rockefeller Center.
Thank you for listening.