Why use an art advisor?

Purchasing fine art is a significant investment; it should be an exciting and fun experience and based on the appeal of a work to the collector, but it should also be an informative and educational experience, making the work that much more meaningful.  As a firm, and as individuals, we have provided support and encouragement to emerging and mid-career artists in the United States and Italy, and have worked with a number of galleries to assist in getting exposure and collector support for those artists. 

Our goal is to create relationships between collectors and artists which will benefit both.  We are not a "gallery" and do not "represent" any artists, nor take any share of their revenue from the sale of works.  Our fees (generally based on a sliding percentage scale) are paid by those to whom we provide counsel, which prevents the conflict of interest innate to the " art gallery model" and allocates fees to the party who can, in reality, best afford to pay them.  

As a collector, we know you will find it so much more satisfying to own a work by an artist whose work you have gotten to know better than from a single piece you might be considering.  And there is nothing that makes a connection to a work more complete than actually meeting the artist and experiencing his or her enthusiasm for the creative process in person, perhaps even making a studio visit and seeing works in progress.

Please look at the "Artists" page on this site for an introduction to some of the artists we whose work we closely follow and/or have recently placed in collections.  From there, you can click on any image to find information about the artist and additional images of his or her work.

About our firm's name

Schermerhorn Hall at Columbia University has always been the home and heart of the university’s art history department on the Morningside Heights campus and is where all three of the advisors  in our firm pursued studies.  The 9th floor of Schermerhorn is the location of the offices of many of the most prominent art history professors, as well as lecture and seminar rooms; hence, our name, Schermerhorn 9. The excitement of those days of exploration and learning are infused in the culture of our firm, and our name serves as a continual reminder of why we do what we do. 

We gladly arrange for clients to meet the artists in whom they are interested and are often able to afford the opportunity to see those artists at work in their studios