Collector Stan Storer with a piece by Robert Stackhouse. Photo/Shanna Gillette, Creative Loafing.

This week in Creative Loafing, I profiled South Tampa art collector Stan Storer in the first of a series of profiles that will continue here on Artsqueeze. The profiles are part of an effort—spurred by conversations with several people in the community—to create heightened awareness and even a certain cachet around collecting art by local artists. (Stan appears above in front of a piece by Robert Stackhouse, an internationally known artist who lives in St. Petersburg.)

“How do we make collecting cool?” is how one distressed local collector posed the problem to me during a phone call last month. I suppose the first step is to get people who have disposable income to make the mental leap of budgeting part of that money for art. Oops, wait. I forgot something much larger that must happen before people can consider spending their disposable income on art. First, they must understand the value of art.

Yikes! That’s a big one.

Here’s a link to the NYT article about collecting mentioned by ec in a previous comment. A few paragraphs into the article, an art dealer makes a complaint I’ve heard often from others in his field: Why do people who have no compunction about spending money on real estate, furniture, interior design, etc., expect to be given a discount on works of art? And here is the second NYT article ec mentioned, published the same day (yesterday), about online galleries that have capitalized on the intimidation and uncertainty people feel buying art by creating more accessible, affordable and transparent venues.

As with any complex issue, it seems we have a confluence of problems here. Neophyte collectors are overwhelmed with uncertainty that they’re buying the right thing for the right amount of money from the right person. (A friend of mine has his eye on a photograph he saw at Miami Basel, but the artist’s European gallery wants about $5,000 for it. I’m asked: Can he look for another gallery that will sell the photograph to him for less? Not really. If the artist is represented by another gallery, you can be sure that both galleries are working together to determine the value of her work and set a consistent price.) Gallery owners, confident in the value of their artists and the legitimacy of their prices, tend to have limited patience with amateurs who don’t understand the process.

On a local level, we have a slightly different set of issues. In the case of works by local artists, their value proposition isn’t that they’re likely to increase exponentially in value—it’s that purchasing them not only wins you something cool to stick on the wall but also supports the kind of community you want to live in (presumably one filled with vibrant arts events and creative, diverse residents). That concept may sound dangerously like charity or socialism to the average American reader, but it’s not; maybe it does spring from a more holistic idea of capitalism, but it’s no different from the rationale with which you would choose to eat at a local restaurant over Ruby Tuesday’s or support local bands by attending their performances. This applies to becoming a patron of a group like Experimental Skeleton as well as buying art in its more commoditized forms.

Once people understand the value of art, they should begin to think about how much they might budget for it on an annual basis. Personally, my collecting budget is about 5% of my income. I wish I could be like Don and Mera Rubell of the stunning Rubell Family Collection in Miami; for four decades they devoted about 25% of their then-modest annual incomes to collecting contemporary art. Now their family foundation runs a museum-like space in Wynwood with incredible programming including artist talks that share the wealth with the community.

Keeping with Miami/Wynwood as an example, I don’t think you could have convinced most people ten years ago that the current scene there would exist. What do we have to do to assure that Tampa Bay’s arts community will grow and thrive into the next decade? I’m tired of watching galleries close.