How to Know If It's Good
The four-part framework I use to evaluate whether a work of art has staying power — not art theory, but four practical questions you can ask standing in front of anything, at any price point, in any gallery, fair, or Instagram feed.
“I really appreciated learning your approach…I work at a museum and as an appraiser, and have a personal collection too. I often find myself stuck in the weeds…Your suggested path was really thoughtful and approachable.” -Collector and arts professional
Intentionality
Every decision in a piece of art — scale, material, mark, color, composition — should feel considered rather than accidental or decorative. The question isn’t whether an artist is skillful. It’s whether they’re in command of their choices, whether they know exactly what they’re doing and why. Craft without intention is decoration. Intention without craft can still produce powerful work. But when you get both, you get something worth stopping for — and that combination is the first thing worth learning to see.
Novelty
Novelty is the criterion that’s easiest to feel and hardest to define — the wow, I’ve never seen that before instinct that stops you in a booth. But it’s also the one most likely to mislead you if you stop there. Novelty isn’t trend-following, and it isn’t shock or strangeness for its own sake. It’s an artist who found a visual language that belongs to them and nobody else — something nobody got to first, and that you’d recognize as theirs without needing to be told.
Self-Awareness
Self-awareness is an artist’s demonstrated understanding of where their work sits in a larger conversation — art historical or contemporary, with a Baroque master or with the artist showing in the next booth. That conversation can be explicit or subtle, but it has to be there for a reason. Artists who know what they’re in dialogue with make more informed choices. Their work carries more layers, because it’s grounded in something bigger than their own instincts alone.
Relevancy
Relevancy is the most misunderstood of the four criteria, mostly because people assume it means art about current events. It doesn’t. Art about current events is journalism. Relevancy is whether a work tells you something true about how it feels to be alive in this specific moment — the fear, the grief, the longing, the specific texture of a consciousness that belongs to right now and no other time. You can’t fake it, and you can’t buy it with pedigree.
The Seen & Liked Collection is where all four of these criteria work together in practice — a growing collection of works I’ve personally vetted, all under $15,000, updated every week. No galleries paying for placement, no financial relationships of any kind. Just the work that earned its place.
Your Type, Your Lens
Each of these criteria tends to be the one a particular kind of collector reaches for first — the Design-Forward Collector toward intentionality, the Venturist toward novelty, the Contextual Collector toward self-awareness, the Strategic Collector toward relevancy. Knowing your type won’t replace the framework. But it will tell you which question you’re most likely to skip — and that’s usually where a collection gets more interesting.
Not sure which type you are?