How to Buy Your Way Into the Art World
Or: The $2,500 service that promises to get you there
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In pop culture the Art World is shorthand for “snobfest.” From Charlotte’s gallery in Sex and the City, to Marnie doing a horrible job as a gallerina in Season 1 of Girls, to the opening scene in Hellboy II—where auction attendees in black tie are slaughtered—anywhere that paintings are sold and sculptures admired is portrayed as a closed bastion of elite sophisticates.
Now, two women who come from that world are banking that people outside it are willing to pay to get in. Marlies Verhoeven and Daisy Peat, both formerly of Sotheby’s, have founded the Cultivist, which bills itself as “the world’s only art club offering uniquely privileged access to every aspect of the art world.”