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What Do Next-Gen Collectors Want From the Art World?

Younger Millennial and Gen Z collectors are entering the market earlier and spending more ambitiously than their predecessors, yet their motivations have less to do with financial gain than with personal storytelling and their connection to artists.

What is the next generation of collectors and patrons looking for? This is probably the most important question the art world is facing today, and on multiple levels. As a major wealth transfer unfolds in the U.S. and Europe and a generation of legendary collectors passes away, an entire industry is trying to understand who its next target will be. This is especially urgent as the art world continues to be led by legacy participants within hierarchical structures that follow a template set many decades ago. Those old ways may not hold up in the face of a rising buyer base that brings with it an entirely different set of behaviors, priorities and value systems.

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A coming book by seasoned art writer Georgina Adam, NextGen Collectors and the Art Market, confronts hard truths about this generational handover. Millennial and Gen Z collectors are younger, often self-made, more globally dispersed, digitally native and less bound to old codes of collecting than previous generations. Their rise could reshape not only what art is bought but also how it is bought, where it is bought and what forms of cultural value matter. The key theme of the book is that traditional art-market institutions risk losing this cohort if they cannot adapt to younger collectors’ expectations around transparency, immediacy, access, identity, sustainability and new modes of ownership. As Adam points out, these new collectors are not simply inheriting the old market; they are actively disrupting the status quo, with novel sources of wealth, motivations, tastes and buying habits.

“A Changing of the Guard,” Avant Arte’s annual survey of the collecting and cultural habits of collectors under 45 years old, makes this picture even clearer. (Worth noting is that Avant Arte is one of these next-generation art world ventures, led by Millennial founders Christian Luiten, Curtis Penning and Mazdak Sanii and closely attuned to the needs of the generation it aims to serve through its mission of making art collecting and patronage more accessible.) It found that next-gen art entrepreneurs are increasingly carving their own paths, creating models shaped by their peers’ preferences and behaviors rather than politely adapting to the market’s existing norms and rituals.

Conceived in 2015 as a curated marketplace to help younger art enthusiasts discover and collect art across a range of budgets, Avant Arte evolved into a global platform connecting contemporary artists with a worldwide audience. It then shifted its focus to the intersection of collecting and patronage. The platform has actively partnered with institutions and raised more than $10 million for major international museums and cultural organizations, including LACMA, the Guggenheim and Dia Art Foundation, through the sale of limited-edition artworks by high-profile artists.

Surveying more than 2,000 collectors, enthusiasts and art professionals in 62 countries, the report offers a clear picture of a generation more engaged and invested in the future of museums and institutions than many would assume. But it also reveals a cohort of collectors actively pushing for drastic changes in a market that’s traditionally been slow to change. Put another way, they are willing, even eager, to engage with and support the arts, but on their own terms. What follows are the key takeaways from Avant Arte’s research.

They treat art as a personal storytelling........

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