ArtsyReviews of artsy.net

Never return emails. Crazy!

Read review left from Artsy buyer, who left a complaint on BBB, Better Business Bureau website about an artwork purchased on 7 installments from Gallery Art, an art gallery in Aventura, FL owned by Ken Hendel. Although art deposits are refundable by law, Ken Hendel, owner of Gallery Art refused to refund any partially paid installments when the buyer realized Gallery Art was not honoring its invoice commitment & continued to sell the same artwork twice. That is fraud plain and simple. Artsy refused to provide assistance to the buyer and failed to respond to the Better Business Bureau complaint. That's because Artsy employees have no knowledge about buying or selling fine art. Even worse, Artsy employees never take a position ever, and frequently condone obvious counterfeits. Artsy never removes any fakes or deceptive listings, even when obvious so it is a breeding ground for fraud. In fact Artsy has a caveat on its website that states all art sold on artsy is "as is". Artsy doesn't care at all about ethics. Its management is looking to launch an IPO and walk away. Artsy doesn't make a dime and is consistently losing millions every year. Read actual BBB review that has gone unanswered by Artsy. Artsy facilitates defrauding of customers by rouge art galleries. Artsy condones rouge galleries so buyers are susceptible & unprotected from fraud. When alerted, Artsy lies, plays games, ignores you & takes no responsibility, pretending it is not their problem. Artsy does make sure that galleries are really practicing correct safety measures when alerted of obvious fraud. Artsy never once investigated anything. Artsy has no interest in helping buyers who have been victimized from art listed on its platform. Artsy has a major conflict of interest, because it protects rouge galleries allowing buyers to be defrauded by erroneously "vetted" art galleries. The problem is partner gallery, Gallery Art, Aventura, FL, who listed an artwork on Artsy. I saw it and I reached out to them & negotiated a purchase price of $75,000, with a payment plan of 7 months. I saved the listing prior to purchase and was given an invoice. Instead of reserving the piece the Owner Ken H***** and his sister Amy played games with me and re-listed the same piece with the same internal art ID to $120k from the original $100K. The re-listed piece had the same ArtID as the one I had negotiated as it was also on the invoice. I saved the re-listing showing the same ArtID and called the gallery and got no help from Artsy. I told Ken that I either want my money back or give me a better price since he never unlisted and or reserved it for me and has been trying to get a better price for himself This gallery is very shady, and Artsy has no problem keeping them on it's site so others can go through what I have gone through.Gallery Art doesn't want to give my money back and will do anything figure out a way to keep it by bullying me. Gallery Art and Artsy just looking after themselves, I feel preyed upon by both companies. Ken appears to be a well seasoned predator from his reviews and news articles. This is not what I expected to find on your platform for my first ever purchase. I had no clue this gallery even existed until I found their print for sale on Artsy's website. I can't trust the Artsy platform if they are putting people like this on it to prey on people like me.

Bought a piece which I subsequently asked to resell on the site - only months later - due to a change in circumstances/not having space for it any longer. i was told they wouldn't allow me to do this and have not provided a clear reason as to why - seem useless to me as a market/aggregator and I won't use them again - will instead rely on more trusted web platforms or buy direct from galleries, Very poor customer service, t&cs (I also had issues when I had an item delivered to me), & ease of use; seem to be lacking the volume to make what could be a good idea work.

Once worth it, but not anymore, and beware their auto renew. I joined Artsy with a gallery at the beginning. And at that time it felt like a breath of fresh air, and a really useful tool for galleries. It was sold to me as a way of helping collectors find the galleries that would best support their tastes, and it felt like a real partnership between Artsy the gallery and the collectors. I stayed for two years and it would have been longer, but I closed that gallery. During that time I only sold enough work through the site to pay for the subscription but not make a profit on the investment. The coverage and profile I got made it feel worth it. A couple of years ago I opened a new gallery and joined artsy again. I was surprised that they had got rid of the selection process, and how many galleries were on it. It appears their focus is online domination of the visual arts in the same way Uber has taken over the taxi business. Gone is the sense of them supporting your business, and there are so many galleries it is hard to get noticed. It is labor intensive if you want to get anything productive out of it - as labor intensive as running your own website and inventory system - so you are in fact having to do everything twice. If you don't have a website that supports an inventory system, or you are so big that the subscription and staff time uploading and documenting exhibits is considered no big deal it might be worth it, but it no longer made financial sense to me. Which brings me to a word of warning... They have an automatic renewal on the contract, which means you can only get out of the contract at exactly the right time (you can't miss it by a day), or you head right into another year-long agreement and an expensive buy out.

An aggregator site seemed like a good idea and I 'phoned around a few galleries who were already using it before I decided to take the plunge. Only one gallery had been using Artsy for nearly a year and they had sold nothing, everyone else had only been signed up for a couple of months so, although they'd not had any success with it, they couldn't really give me a rounded view. So, here's the view of someone who was paying for it for a year. It takes a long time to add work. They don't want you to add an artists CV so it's difficult to give users an idea of the importance of an artist. This only works on categorisation so try to be as generic as possible. It shows recently added work first so anything you add month 1 has got no chance of showing on the first few pages of a search by month 3 - you have to delete fully and reload to reset work to the front of the queue. You have to be on here every week adding work to get any chance of being seen and I also tried the virtual exhibitions, again without any success. Most users are based in the US so if you price in £ or € you have less chance of selling because you're competing against US based users who won't have shipping/customs issues. They promised that they have lots of UK based users, not convinced that's true. It might be useful if you're selling wall decoration but for fine art, I really don't recommend this product.

Great Art auction / Gallery aggregator. Very convenient for purchasing any type of art I want.