How Knowing And Collecting Art Builds Your Cultural Capital

One late morning on a winter day at the Museum of Modern Art, my friend stood in front of a Cy Twombly painting with her young son who was at that age when kids are immersed in fingerpainting and dinosaurs. She gave the canvas a 5-second glance. “Yours is much better,” she whispered, turning to her son. “The one framed in the hallway,” she reminded him, referencing his indigo hand splotch overlaid with three yellow finger swipes.

She pulled out her smartphone, swiped across, brought it close to her mouth, and then enunciated, “What — is — the — last — sale — price — of — ‘Academy’ — by — Cy — Twombly?” ChatGPT began to respond, spitting out data at 120 words per minute:

“Twombly’s artworks from the 1950s have achieved significant prices at auction. For instance, his ‘Untitled’ (1955), a piece similar in medium and period, sold for $21 million at Christie’s in 2022. This indicates that if ‘The Academy’ were ever to be auctioned, it could command a comparable or even higher price, given its prominence and the artist’s esteemed reputation,” the AI chatbot spat out.

She then leaned over to scrutinize the smeared pencil marks on the cream canvas to figure out what the painting was saying to her. But it spoke as if in Finnish slang with a thick Chinese accent over a bad Zoom connection. In other words, she had no idea how to read what she was seeing. Looking harder didn’t get her closer to comprehending the AI-quoted $21 million price tag.

While she was having difficulty understanding the painting’s significance, her son had no problem interacting instinctually with the artist’s calligraphic lines. Attracted by Twombly’s repetitive fractal chalk spirals on blackboards, the boy ran across the room. He began twirling in circles moving his arms, tracing imaginary ellipses in space. “Look Mommy! I’m a Twooobee painting.”

Their reactions of bewilderment and improvisational play illustrate typical museum visitors with limited art history under their belts. Appreciating art has a learning curve, but by strengthening your intellectual muscle, you can boost your cultural knowledge.

How to read art

Reading art is complex since we can connect with it on many different levels: aesthetically, intellectually, culturally, emotionally, spiritually, technically or politically. Like a language, we need a basic vocabulary and context to have an informed dialogue with it.

When museumgoers lack access to critical analysis or possess limited art history education, appreciation often rests on market-based valuation, and technical or visceral readings as demonstrated by the mother and son. Their depth of art understanding rested on their perception that lacked objective knowledge like how abstract expressionists — Cy Twombly among them — focused on emotions, improvisation, non-representation and spontaneity to convey their inner psyche.

To be fair, it is not easy for visitors to art museums, galleries or art centers to understand all the artworks set before them. To address this challenge institutions use technology and more family-friendly inclusive programming.

With a brief introduction of an artwork’s historical background, museums can deepen our understanding of its cultural value. Thanks to technology, some museums now provide richer content via QR codes and audio guides that offer cultural knowledge in addition to aesthetic connection.

French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu called this form of non-financial power “cultural capital” — the knowledge and vocabulary that make cultural participation possible, as well as lifting one’s socioeconomic status. For example, the gallerygoer who possesses cultural capital and can smoothly navigate the room is able to converse with the artists about their work using art jargon and identify their art in a larger social context.

To build one’s cultural capital, AI-augmented apps provide expedited shortcuts. Search engines scan the web with abbreviated factoids of an artwork’s formal, historical, political and emotional dimensions. So rather than just asking Siri for the economic value of art, like our MoMA mom, one could use AI to investigate the cultural significance of Twombly’s “Academy” to understand how its $21 million value has been measured.

For more accurate results, users can prompt AI apps to give you results drawing from peer-reviewed academic articles, books or content from recognized art historians and curators.

For others, in-person talks, tours, family-friendly art workshops and artist panels offer deeper engagement and museum audioguides decode historical and conceptual context.

In commercial art galleries, visitors can direct questions to staff who offer scripted, albeit informative soundbites of rotating exhibits. In this context, their goal is to sell work and thus conversation may center around the success of the artist, their exhibition record, inclusion in collections and significant press coverage.

This art market-driven conversation can be beneficial if you intend to purchase art or are even just curious to learn more about how an artist’s work is priced. But nothing compares to getting straight to the source; Unlike the cold transactional nature of the commercial gallery, the open studio is an intimate and informal setting without the intimidating white walls and social pressures to be well-informed in art.

The Open Studio

Through the open studio concept, the public has the rare opportunity to speak directly to the maker. This long-standing tradition harks back to the bohemian streets of 19th-century Paris when artists like Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec, Manet, Pisarro and Van Gogh welcomed visitors to discuss art and philosophy while drinking absinthe. These occasions served as both social and professional whereby the public could get up close to the artist and their work.

They also provide an informal setting that demystifies the artist and the art process. You will discover that most successful artists are articulate, educated entrepreneurs. The romantic and tragic myths of the starving artist, the crazy recluse artist or the tortured genius creating in dark attics will be quickly rebutted after you make a few studio visits.

Sac Open Studios, hosted by Verge Center for the Arts, now in its 20th year, welcomes the public to visit artists, craftspeople, designers, filmmakers and architects in their studios. This year on Sept. 13 and 14, and Sept. 20 and 21 at least 30,000 people will visit over 260 artist studios throughout Sacramento County.

Artist Alfredo Gochi who participated in Sac Open Studios in 2024 emphasized the richness of community interaction between artists and visitors. “It was an opportunity [for artists] to have a conversation with somebody who wants to know more about them and their art in a more personal and casual environment … the same way you, as an artist, want to know their point of view or interpretations.’

ARTHOUSE Gallery & Studios and Warehouse Artist Lofts open their doors to the public every first Friday of the month. Open studios are also an opportunity to buy art at lower prices. As long as you are not purchasing from a blue-chip artist who usually has strict contracts with their galleries to pay 50% commission on all sales, an artist can sell their work for less than what they would ask for in a commercial gallery. If you are not sure how much to budget for an artwork, below are some tips for novices.

Buying art

Art can be an elusive commodity and buying it often feels intimidating whether you are looking at street art fairs, mid-career galleries or investment blue-chip auction houses. Pricing art isn’t common knowledge like the price of eggs or gas that are based upon measurements like time, labor, supply, demand, materials, season, weather, subsidies, taxes and regulations. The pricing of art, especially when it reaches the millions of dollars — such as the $8 million Jeff Koons statue “Coloring Book #4” located outside the Golden 1 Center in Sacramento’s Downtown Commons — remains an enigma for most.

The more famous an artist is the easier it is to price compare online or at auction houses. However, this category can be out of reach for new buyers, who might have a price range closer to $300 to $5,000. For an artist who has not achieved worldwide fame, it can be difficult to look up a fair market price. Yet, there is a strategy to pricing art that makes it easier to make wise art purchases whether someone is picking up a $50 drawing from a street artist or an oil painting from a renowned local painter for $10,000.

Request to see the artist’s CV, biography, articles, reviews, listing of collections, art catalogs or art books to gauge their value. You can even ask the market value of previous works sold. The more solo exhibitions, important galleries and museum exhibitions, and collections where their work resides, the higher the value. Keep in mind art — unlike gold or the size of houses — is not necessarily valued based on size or materials. Duchamp, Dali and Morandi paintings are quite small, yet fetch millions of dollars while enormous paintings by unknown artists may go for only hundreds.

Ultimately, an artist’s list of worldwide accomplishments may be irrelevant to you and instead the work may speak to you so strongly that your budget can afford the asking price. Or you may be drawn to the artwork of an unknown artist, and not be concerned about their lack of formal recognition.

As you visit more galleries, museums, open studios, auctions or even online art sale platforms, you will develop an artistic taste while educating yourself on trends, traditions and the history of art. Collecting art at any scale contributes to your cultural standing as a patron of the arts and an art connoisseur.

Cultural capital

In his 1979 book “La Distinction: Critique Sociale du Jugement,” Bourdieu considers the sociological status of non-financial assets like the accumulation of cultural knowledge, educational degrees, and our ability to discuss topics like art, music and literature. One can inherit this cultural capital through family, experience, formal and informal education and art collecting.

Unlike manners, behavior and monetary worth, cultural capital transcends class in that a person from a lower or middle economic class may accumulate cultural capital. Beyond its sociological implications of one’s prestige, one’s relationship with art serves as a manifestation of one’s journey of tastes, values, intellect and spiritual path. When one collects art they are visualizing a narrative of the self.

Enveloping ourselves in art helps us reflect upon the time we inhabit and the collective memories and experiences we share as a society. Like a collection of books or records, an art collection also reveals who we are — tracing the route we took year by year, image by image. Next time you are in front of an artwork, linger longer, exercise your intellectual muscles, and strengthen your cultural capital.

Sacramento native Angie Eng is a conceptual artist and educator who has lived in New York City, Paris, Mexico and Ethiopia. She holds a Ph.D. in intermedia arts, writing and performance, and has received over 50 grants, commissions and residencies for her creative work. She teaches at New York University and is an independent cultural writer for Solving Sacramento and Artist Organized Art.