Wendi Deng-backed Artsy wants to change the way people buy art
Artsy wants to create the world’s largest marketplace for art and is among a growing band of companies leveraging technology to demystify and open up the once-stuffy world of art dealership
The days when people had to fly thousands of miles just to view a painting by a great artist such as Pablo Picasso are long gone, thanks to the convenience of online art sites and improvements in digital picture quality.
Now Artsy, an online art platform co-founded by Chinese-American businesswoman Wendi Deng Murdoch, is seeking to change the way people find and buy art by connecting users of its website and app to galleries and museums around the world, allowing them to mine big data functions, participate in live auctions and even preview how a painting may look in their home via the use of clever technology.
Its recently-introduced augmented reality (AR) function allows users to ‘project’ an art work on to a wall and ‘see’ how it might fit into their living room. AR is a form of virtual reality where the real world is expanded upon or enhanced in some way through the use of virtual elements.
Deng Murdoch, once married to media mogul Rupert Murdoch, co-founded Artsy in 2009 with Carter Cleveland, a Princeton-educated computer science engineer and the company’s CEO, and Sebastian Cwilich, who was trained in mathematics research and is the firm’s president and chief operating officer.
“I think we’re the only art company of a certain size that is run by technology people,” said Cwilich in an interview with the South China Morning Post in late March, adding the company has always been a tech-driven company since its inception.
Artsy, which wants to create the world’s largest marketplace for art, is among a growing band of companies leveraging technology to demystify and open up the once-stuffy world of art dealership. Competitors include US online platforms 1stdibs and Artnet, and French online marketplace and database Artprice.
