Artsy (website)


Artsy is an online platform for discovering, buying and selling fine art. Artsy's search engine and database draw connections and map relationships among works of art. Founded by Carter Cleveland, computer science graduate from Princeton, and is led by Mike Steib, former CEO of XO Group, the parent company of The Knot. Artsy aims to "expand the art market to support more artists and art in the world."
Artsy has been backed by multiple investors, including Wendi Murdoch, Dasha Zhukova, Thrive Capital, Jack Dorsey, Eric Schmidt, Bob Pittman, Rich Barton, Keith Rabois, David Tisch, Chris Dixon, Peter Thiel, Charlie Cheever, Dave Morin, David Kidder, and Larry Gagosian.

History

Carter Cleveland, the son of an art historian, founded Artsy during his senior year at Princeton University and worked on the site from his dorm room. Cleveland's goal for Artsy is for the site "to be the place where every single user in the world goes to discover art online." In May 2010, Artsy participated in the New York City conference, TechCrunch Disrupt, where they competed in the Startup Battlefield and received the Yahoo! Rookie Award! A year later, the team demoed Artsy at the Beyeler Foundation at Art Basel.
In 2019, it was reported that in 2018 the data for 1,070,000 accounts were stolen from Artsy. The information included the name, email address, location, IP address and password SHA-512 hashed with a salt. The passwords were not stored in cleartext, but an email from Artsy encouraged users to change their passwords.

Corporate affairs

Leadership

Artsy is led by CEO Mike Steib. Other key executives are:
Since launching, Artsy has raised a total of $100 million from individuals in the worlds of art, tech, and media, including Larry Gagosian, Wendi Murdoch, and Rich Barton. The company employs over 200 employees across three continents.

Products (website and app)

Artsy currently features over 1,000,000 works by 100,000 artists on its site, and more than half are for sale. Artsy partners with over 3,000+ galleries, 850+ museums and institutions, and 80+ international art fairs, who also publish artworks on the site, providing collectors and enthusiasts a central resource to learn about and purchase artwork from anywhere in the world. In addition, Artsy partners with top auction houses, like Phillips, Christie's and Sotheby's.
On average, Artsy attracts 2.3 million unique visitors each month. In 2018, it was the top-ranking art marketplace on Google with visitors from more than 160 countries.

The Art Genome Project

Artsy is powered by The Art Genome Project — "an ongoing study of the characteristics that distinguish and connect works of art." A collaboration between art historians and engineers, The Art Genome Project draws upon art-historical scholarship and artificial intelligence to assign values to artwork based on over 1211 characteristics or "genes." These categories range from color and period to "Technique: Documentary Photography" and "Group Portrait." The Art Genome Project aims to help users uncover works of art based on personal taste and preference to facilitate discovery of art. As of 2020 the AGP was on hold for restructuring.

Reception

According to Wired, Artsy "has the potential to introduce each buyer to a wide range of artists and artworks, all of them related in some way and—this is key—most of them unknown and otherwise inaccessible to any but the most knowledgeable connoisseurs."
Bloomberg News reported that "ver the past nine years the New York startup has become one of the top destinations for buying, viewing, and learning about art. It has pulled off this feat by partnering with galleries and auction houses, rather than directly competing with them."
In 2012, criticism around The Art Genome Project centered on "its classification system, which rubs some artists the wrong way. 'I don't think what I am doing has anything to do with Cindy Sherman,' says British artist Jonathan Smith after being told the site links his work to hers via a staged-photography gene. 'That sounds like something a programmer would think of.'" Also, "there's the issue of whether art can be properly represented on the Web. "'There is something sensual about a visual object that doesn't translate online,"' says New York City-based collector Niel Frankel."
In 2019, Forbes reported on Artsy's The Online Art Collector Report, based on its users opinions which found that buyers prefer price transparency and purchasing online. “People are buying their cars online, people are buying their homes online, people are buying high six-figure art online, and it turns out that there is not just comfort with the channel, but it’s the preferred channel,” says CEO Mike Stieb.
Steib revealed in an interview with Barron's that he came to Artsy by using the site to shop for art for his own home.
"The demands of eCommerce are also potentially revolutionary for the opaque art market. Internet users expect a one-stop-shop and price transparency as well as a highly secure and personalized platform,” says Mike Steib, chief executive of Artsy, which hosts more than 3,200 galleries on its site." Steib argues that Artsy can help bridge the digital divide in the art world for smaller galleries that can’t afford to hire an extensive tech-savvy staff. Artsy will offer a solution to this problem with a platform that allows users to learn about artists, buy art, and bid for works at auction.
Numerous publications, including TRT World, Wired, The New York Observer, Vogue, and The Wall Street Journal have published articles about Artsy.

Awards and Recognition

Artsy received the "Rookie Disruptor Award" in 2010.
Carter Cleveland was listed in BLOUINARTINFO's The 30-and-Under Crowd: The Art World's Most Influential Young Figures of 2012. In  2014 Artsy was named Best Art Website in the 18th Annual Webby Awards.
Carter Cleveland also made Art Review’s Power 100 in 2015.
In 2019, Artsy won the Vimeo Best Brand Story: Large Business award. Vimeo’s panel of judges captured it well, writing that "Artsy has nailed that elusive and delicate balance that most brands strive and fail at: bold storytelling that also sells a product.”