The Metrocultural
If you are based in London, or any other main cultural hub around the world, your collector profile may be that of the ‘Metrocultural’.
Metroculturals are prosperous liberal urbanite groups, who choose city lifestyles for the broad cultural opportunities, and have their preferred art form or style.
They represent good prospects for emerging artists and new, innovative artworks, and are highly responsive to e-commerce, likely to take up digital offers and make recommendations to friends.
In the UK, Millennials and Gen Z make 48% of the ‘Metrocultural’ population.
The Experience Seeker
If you do not identify with the Metrocultural group, or perhaps you do not live right in the hotspots of the Metropolis and travel to them over the weekends to enjoy what they have to offer, you may be part of the ‘Experience Seeker’ tribe.
Experience Seekers are the most significant part of urban art audiences, who are highly active, diverse, social and ambitious singles and young couples engaging with art on a regular basis, tend to live close to the city centre, are mostly in search of novelty and have disposable income to spend in art, art memberships, bars and restaurants. They are digitally savvy and share experiences through social media on their smartphones.
The Future of Collecting: Millennials & Generation Z
1 - The Social Media Native Collector
Metroculturals and Experience Seekers are those among the Millennials with a growing interest in buying both digital art and unique artworks (such as paintings, sculptures, and drawings) online.
If you are a Millennial and identify as a Metrocultural or Experience Seeker, you are a social media native, and we advise you to delve into your digital habit to start sourcing and buying items for your art collection. In a recent Artsy survey, ‘66% of buyers said they use Instagram or other social media networks for discovery and 26% said they buy art from Instagram. Millennials and Generation Z are leading the trend’.
2 - Ethics: The Core of the New Collector
Millennials and Generation Z are nowadays the fastest-growing segments of collectors, and if you are one of them, you will have a very specific way of behaving and of looking for art that you should nurture and refine. You will most certainly blur the boundaries between collector and seller because you are not afraid to resell what you buy and to treat artworks as a financial asset. The social impact of your art investments will be important, as you will tend to invest in artworks and artists to fulfil your philanthropic aspirations.
3- You Are Hot: The Chase After the Young Collector
Many online and offline galleries, nowadays, are focussing on attracting the attention of people born from 1980 to the mid-to-late 1990s, because they know these people will be curious, witty, and open-minded art buyers. Yet you will find the old-fashioned rules of the art world pretentious and annoying. You, most probably, will not enjoy the snobbism and classism that oozes from Private Views and Auction Houses’ Salesrooms. You will also find the dress code typical of these events too formal and passée, and you will be seriously annoyed by the lack of price transparency, and will ask yourself why prices are not shown everywhere and you have to ask for them.
Hence, be proud for being part of a new wave of collectors that are forcing galleries to rethink ideas of transparency, flexibility, diversity, and sustainability. The gallery business model must adapt to consider these elements, and therefore you are pushing for innovation and for the revolutionary ways you like to see and buy art.
4 - New Channels for New Collectors
You want to shop for your art as you do for anything else. As well as being used to getting what you want promptly and efficiently —from instant delivery pizza to personally customised Nikes—you are turned off by some ingrained practices of the art market, such as elitism, exclusivity (the velvet rope outside a vernissage) and a lack of transparency. And this is why you prefer to see art exhibitions online, in Metaverse platforms like Spatial, Decentraland, Roblox, etc.
Withholding information such as price lists just breeds suspicion in you, particularly since you have a deep distrust of corporations, preferring influencers on social media to guide your decision-making in many domains. And this is why you love to buy art online, where you have a huge amount of choice at your fingertip, and where prices are clearly stated, as well as shipping and delivery costs and any extra fee.
A B O U T U S
We are a Metaverse Art Gallery which believes in a new future for the Art World in the Post-Digital Era.
We push the boundaries of Contemporary Art by curating VR exhibitions with artworks by exceptional talents who are socially, ethically, and politically committed to the making of a more equal, sustainable, and fair World.
Our Programme of Virtual Reality Exhibitions explores the most current and pressing matters in a globalised human hub.
We are for Art Collectors interested in technology, social equality, ecology, scientific development, and alternative perspectives which improve the prospects of Planet Earth.
In recent years, there has been a democratisation of the collecting world, and a trend against the remoteness of the ‘white cube’ and its sense of snobbism and exclusivity. We support and promote this process, as the collector’s space has expanded to a younger, engaged, and more aware audience.
For us, Art in the Metaverse, and online sales, are tools for the democratisation of visual culture and the most effective and far-reaching way to connect collectors with artists.
All the art shown in our Metaverse Exhibition Programme can be acquired in our Online Salerooms. Opening soon in February 2023 at www.arrieregarde.co.uk
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