Cristin Tierney, art advisor, and founder of Cristin Tierney Fine Art Advisory Services, is a very intelligent and serious woman. One of the people who designed the curriculum for the Christie’s Education Masters Program, she is enormously concerned with arts education. This extends into her work as an art advisor, where she sees an essential part of her job as educating those collectors whom she works with. She spoke with me about her advisory business, and her thoughts on the future of art fairs.
WHITEWALL: Please tell me a little about your work as an art advisor. What kind of collectors and collections do you work with?
CRISTIN TIERNEY: We work almost entirely with private collectors. Sometimes we work with museums, but that is usually because we have a client who is associated with that institution. The bulk of our clients are here in the tri-state area. We also have a fair amount of clients in the Mid-West. Some of them are very young, but we have a lot who are retired or semi-retired. And most of them are not speculative, and not interested in “investment.” By that I don’t mean that they want their art suddenly to be worth nothing. But they don’t really buy for that reason.
WW: So the ideal clients?
CT: Yes, we work with some pretty nice people. We also do appraisal work. This is not our favorite, but we do it. And we run seminars on various topics for interested collectors.
WW: What sort of topics do you cover?
CT: It really varies. One semester when there was a lot of interest in Post-war female artists, we did something called 2007 – The Year of the Woman. Down in Chelsea we have some really great relationships with the dealers and galleries, so they are happy to see us. We get a lot of positive responses from the galleries because they understand what we are doing will help to create more informed collectors.
WW: What are your feelings about the Armory Show this year? How would you characterize it? And how does it compare to past years?
CT: I think the Armory Show this year is good. It’s interesting to have the modern work be a part of it. Just like at any fair, there are individually interesting things to see as you come and go. Everything is de-contextualized, so it really is an exercise in connoisseurship. On the whole, the atmosphere and the feeling of this year’s Armory Show are pretty positive. More positive than what I can tell, people felt about Art Basel Miami. I don’t think it has necessarily translated into a great deal of sales. But until recently, this art fair was not about that. It was not a context in which people expected to make big sales. You expected to connect with people who are interested in art and develop ideas. And I think this year at the fair it will definitely do that. I think that what I have seen so far is actually pretty impressive, with the installations and single-artist booths. Art fairs will become more focused on exhibiting art.
Art fairs will become more focused on exhibiting art.
WW: Do you find that art fairs are useful for your work as an art advisor?
CT: They are a blessing and a curse. In some ways they are good because they can really get your clients to focus and set aside some time to go out and look at art. The ideal situation is when we can go down to Chelsea with collectors, visit galleries quietly and uninterrupted, to discuss that artists work. You don’t get to do that in an art fair. It has become something of an art mall. Which is why people sometimes feel that if they are not going to buy, why should they go? It’s hard to string together a coherent narrative, and then it’s also very difficult to get an idea of an artist from what is presented at an art fair. I won’t be sorry when there are fewer art fairs.
WW: What does your actual advisory work consist of when you are at a fair?
CT: Taking tours around. It is an opportunity for me and Heather to get a chance to talk with the different galleries, and find out what they have. It’s a good place to do homework especially with the international galleries. We schedule tours with collectors, back-to back-to-back, whenever possible.
WW: Do you think the current economic climate will have an impact on the future of the art fairs? And how do you think these probable changes will impact the relevance of the art fairs to your own business?
CT: Yes, I do think the economic climate will affect the fairs. The economic shift we’re seeing is not done yet. By the end of this year, things may be better. But we are not really on the road to recovery yet, and it will be a while. Art fairs will become more focused on exhibiting art. The first time I went to Basel, it was not really about sales. But I think in some way, the idea of getting people to focus on a certain city, and exhibiting art there will continue. Maybe that means that cities will have an art show instead of an art fair. And that could be really easy to market, if all the galleries and artists organized themselves the same way the New York art world did around the Armory Show when it used to be held at the Gramercy Park Hotel. I think art fairs are just the beginning of a trend for having these international gatherings.
