Fine Art: Top 3 art museums and galleries you should visit

The art market is flourishing

In “Global Art Market Report” by the art fair Art Basel and the major Swiss bank UBS Economist Clare McAndrew paints a particularly positive picture for 2021: While stock markets continue to slide, interest rates and inflation are rising, the art market is booming as if there was no economic downturn. The total sales of art and antiques by dealers and auction houses were worth an estimated 65.1 billion dollars. This represents an increase of around 29% compared to the previous year and even exceeds the level before the 2019 pandemic.

It is particularly remarkable that all segments of the market have grown: auctions (+47%), private sales (+33%), online trade (+7%) and art trade (+ 18%). As always, the American art market remained the leader with sales of 28 billion dollars, followed by China and Great Britain. 2022 also began promisingly: The sales of major auction houses Christie's, Sotheby's and Phillips rose by 25 percent to 7.4 billion dollars in the first half of the year.

If you want to buy — or even just look at — art, you should look at trade fairs such as Art Basel, or at the world's leading museums and galleries. There are currently more than 55,000 museums in 202 countries around the world. Since taste in art is very subjective, we will introduce you to three of the most important art venues, whose ranking is not only based on data, but is “in the eye of the beholder”:

Top 3 of the most important art museums

1st Louvre, Paris

The oldest art museum in the world was built in the 12th century under King Philip II Augustus as a medieval fortress and converted into the Palais Royale in the course of the 16th century. Since 1793, it has been a museum dedicated “to the preservation, education and transmission of cultural heritage to future generations.”

Today is the Parisian louvre Guarantee for several superlatives: It is the oldest, largest and most visited museum in the world, with an unmistakable glass pyramid in the courtyard and record dimensions. In 2018, the museum had 10.2 million visitors, has an area of 782,910 square meters and houses around 380,000 iconic works of art - above all the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci.

The Louvre consists of ten sections and is highly regarded for the quality of its collection. Art fans will find paintings, sculptures, Egyptian and Greek antiquities as well as prints and drawings there.

2nd Museum of Modern Art, New York

that MoMA was founded in 1929 and was the first museum to dedicate its collection entirely to modern art. Today, the exhibitions include works from the fields of painting and sculpture, printmaking and book illustration, architecture and design, photography, drawings, film and media. The Museum of Modern Art houses around 200,000 works of modern and contemporary art. Highlights include Vincent van Gogh's “The Starry Night,” Salvador Dali's “The Persistence of Memory” (1931) and Andy Warhol's “Gold Marilyn Monroe.”

For pop art fans, a visit to MoMA should be a “must” anyway. Because in addition to Andy Warhol, there are also works by icons such as Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg and Richard Hamilton on display there.

3rd Tate Modern, London

Opened in 2000 Tate Modern The museum, whose roots go back to 1916, attracts almost six million visitors a year and is therefore the sixth most visited art museum worldwide. The collection of modern art includes works by artists such as Lichtenstein, Dali and Picasso and Andy Warhol.

They are presented in four thematically separate areas, each of which deals with the main topics of optimism, idea and object, poetry and dream, as well as matter and gestures. Changing exhibitions are also regularly held in the old factory building on the Thames, which was rebuilt and expanded by Swiss star architects Herzog & de Meuron.

Top 3 best art galleries

1. Leo Castelli Gallery, New York

Leo Castelli was an art dealer of Hungarian and Italian descent whose sponsorship of American painters helped to spread contemporary US art in Europe. Just a few months after opening the gallery in 1959, he introduced two young artists to the world who would change the art scene: Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg. They ushered in a new era of abstract art and made the Leo Castelli Gallery the starting point for the development of Neo-Dada and the subsequent Pop Art movements. Artists whose works have been shown by Castelli include Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg.

2. David Zwirner, various locations

David Zwirner is a first-class contemporary art gallery with three locations in New York City (where it was founded) and branch offices in Paris, London and Hong Kong. Born in Cologne in 1964 as the son of a gallery owner, Zwirner represents over 60 artists and is active on both the primary and secondary markets. Since the first gallery opened in New York in 1993, it has presented innovative, unique and groundbreaking exhibitions across a wide range of media and genres. Zwirner has helped promote the careers of some of today's most influential artists. These include Jeff Koons, Donald Judd, Fred Sandback, Isa Genzken, Yayoi Kusama and Neo Rauch.

With an estimated annual turnover of more than 500 million dollars, Zwirner is one of the largest and most respected international gallery owners, who plans to open his first gallery space in Los Angeles in 2023.

3. Gagosian, various locations

No collector whose heart beats for modern art can get past Larry Gagosian. The 77-year-old dealer started out in modest circumstances and initially earned money selling posters on the streets of Los Angeles. His keen eye for quality and genuine talent benefited him even back then. When he then started reselling contemporary works of art, his business grew rapidly.

The Gagosian Gallery was founded in 1980, initially in partnership with dealer Leo Castelli in SoHo. Today, his galleries in major cities around the world display the most influential artists of the 20th and 21st centuries — including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Nam June Paik, Damien Hirst, Anish Kapoor and Ed Ruscha. Gagosian is famous for extremely expensive art transactions, such as Andy Warhol's “Shot Sage Blue Marilyn,” the Gagosian Auctioned for 195 million dollars at Christie's has.

Every visit to one of the six art halls mentioned above should be a pleasure and a very special experience - both for art experts and beginners. However, the works on display there change hands only very rarely, if at all. If a famous work of art is traded at auction or on the open market, astronomical prices are called up, which usually only very well-heeled collectors can raise.

Specialized platforms offer an excellent opportunity to engage with art as a collector and investment object, even as a newcomer to the industry. For example, FINEXITY, together with an experienced team of experts, curates contemporary works by renowned artists such as Roy Lichtenstein, Bansky or Damien Hirst, which are otherwise only accessible to insiders, gallery owners or museums. By tokenizing works of art into digital shares, private investors can put together a diversified portfolio starting at just 500 euros. And as soon as the painting or sculpture is sold, they profit from the potential increase in value just like an owner.