Asset Trip with Masterworks Head of Art Acquisitions Masha Golovina

And what kind of value do you see art providing as an asset class that people can add to their investment portfolio?

So, art is really interesting because it’s uncorrelated with just about every major asset class, including the S&P [500]—very light correlation there. And from an investment perspective, that’s interesting because at the same time in the last 20 years, it’s outpaced growth in the S&P. So this is really why we find it to be one of the most interesting, basically unsecuritized (up to this point) assets. 

From a broader macro economic standpoint, what we see blue chip art prices influenced by on a grander scale is the wealth creation, the top 1%. As highlighted by the pandemic, we have seen a tremendous amount of wealth creation over the last two years, and we also see art prices continuing to move up. And from a long-term economics perspective, it seems that this is part of a larger trend, and it’s not just isolated to these last two years. So, generally speaking from an investment thesis standpoint on art, that’s really where we’re coming from.