The Groove 245 - Why the Art World Refuses to Be Disrupted
Welcome to the 245th issue of The Groove.
I am Maria Brito, an art advisor, curator, and author based in New York City.
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Why the Art World Refuses to Be Disrupted
Every grand plan to technologically disrupt the art market has failed so far. (c) Bouman Japet
Every couple of weeks, someone reaches out to me: a Harvard alum, VC, tech founder, luxury platform builder. They say the same thing:
“The art world is ripe for disruption.”
They want to Zoom. They send decks. They name-drop investors. Then they proceed to enumerate their accomplishments or disclose their ambitions:
“I’ve had 14 exits.”
“I sold my company to Amazon.”
“We’re going to kill the middleman.”
“I know how to scale luxury.”
I almost always take the calls because they’re often friends of friends. And I always listen. But then I say the same thing:
“This isn’t going to work.”
Because the art world has already been disrupted. Just not in the way they imagine.
Instagram Did What No Platform Could
The most powerful disruption to the art world came in the form of a free app: Instagram.
When it launched, most galleries resisted. They thought it was tacky. Then they slowly joined. Now, it’s essential. Every collector, advisor, dealer, artist, and curator lives on that platform.
Why? Because it broke the old hierarchies. Collectors started DMing artists directly. Artists found audiences before they found galleries. Small galleries found global buyers. A JPEG on your phone became a legitimate way to start a sale.
It’s not just marketing. It’s reach. And it changed the rules of visibility forever.
Online Sales Work, But Not Like Net-a-Porter
Online sales now account for 22% of total dealer sales: double what they were pre-pandemic, according to the 2025 Art Basel & UBS report. Yet these aren’t simple e-commerce clicks. As the report explains, expensive art is still sold after “email exchanges, phone calls, and maybe in-person viewings,” not add-to-cart checkouts. Even the most robust online viewing rooms operate more like high-touch boutiques than mass-market platforms.
Here’s what most outsiders don’t get: This isn’t fashion. You don’t click “Add to Cart” and walk away with a Warhol. Even in digital transactions, the human layer never disappears. People email. They call. They ask about provenance, framing, condition, shipping, storage and discounts. And the gallery ponders if this person is a good collector for this artist. It’s the opposite of the “three-click rule” Steve Jobs obsessed over. In the art market, friction is the norm, not the bug.
And here’s another thing: many galleries don’t even take credit cards. If they do, it’s often through clunky forms that require signatures, not a simple link. And yes, they’ll tack on a surcharge that the buyer has to eat.
The Art Market Is a Castle
The reason the art market is hard to disrupt is because the entire ecosystem still revolves around exclusivity, trust, and relationships.
Galleries operate like families. Gagosian is a sole proprietorship. Zwirner is still David and his children. Most don’t want venture capital, and they don’t need “exits.” Their value is their curation, their knowledge, their taste, their access, their tight grip on who gets to buy what.
And serious collectors don’t want an algorithm to suggest a painting. They want someone like me, who’s been in hundreds of studios, thousands of exhibitions, auction rooms, and art fairs, to tell them what’s worth acquiring. Human touch is still very important to collectors.
That’s not a bug of the system. That is the system.
The Artists Don’t Want It Either
Here’s what tech optimists also get wrong: good artists - the ones who move the needle, who know their art history, who graduate from top MFA programs - don’t dream of debuting in the metaverse. They want to show in white-cube galleries. They want museum retrospectives, Venice Biennale placements, and New York Times reviews. They want to belong to the canon, not a dashboard.
So when someone says: “I worked at Amazon for 20 years, I know how to do this,” I say, “No, you don’t.” Because this isn’t like selling back-to-school merch. Yes, prints, design editions, and NFTs can work at scale. But the real art market isn’t run by code. It’s run by a deep knowledge of art history, of what’s happening today, of scarcity, and of human emotion.
You can’t swipe your way into the best collections, or out of a bad one.
The System Is Antiquated. That’s Why It Works.
Does that mean everything is perfect? Of course not. It’s frustrating. It’s opaque. It’s emotional. But it’s also what makes the art world so fascinating. It resists automation not because it’s inefficient, but because it’s human.
And until someone builds an app that understands beauty, scarcity, timing, and taste, the art world will keep running on PDFs, DMs, and long dinners.
No disruptions. Just evolution.