The number of billionaire women now based in the US, per data from wealth-intelligence firm Altrata. Although the company’s research found that there are still almost six times as many American male billionaires (981, to be exact), women at the upper echelons of the net worth ladder are already reshaping the art industry in an outsized way.

For starters, consider that the richest woman in the country is also one of its premier collectors and institution builders: the Walmart heiress Alice Walton, who is worth an estimated $138bn. Walton transformed her personal collection into the lifeblood of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, which she founded on 120 acres of family-donated land in Bentonville, Arkansas in 2011. Fifteen years later, Crystal Bridges and its sister institution, The Momentary—a space dedicated to contemporary visual and performing art—have become major forces in the American collecting and exhibiting landscape beyond the coasts.

But billionaires are only the best resourced of the women who are shifting collecting dynamics toward equity. Data and anecdotes alike have confirmed that, compared to their male counterparts, high and ultra-high net worth women tend to be more comfortable buying work from emerging artists, more willing to pay higher prices for works by women, and more focused on maintaining gender parity, if not a pro-female tilt, in their holdings as they grow. With women expected to control around $30 trillion of assets by 2030—around three times their share of the pie in 2020, per McKinsey—these trends are only poised to accelerate in the years ahead.

—Tim Schneider / The Gray Market

John B. ASKed: [Last week’s] comparison between art and collectibles has me wondering: is that why so many New York galleries have struggled in Silicon Valley? The population of ultra-high-net-worth individuals there is, relatively speaking, much more neurodiverse than New York’s. As an autistic man, I've been cold-shouldered and relationship-game-shamed by galleries, which is part of why I spend mostly with artists outside the gallery ecosystem. And I love art! Why would nine-figure techies deal with emotional pain from people they know are being manipulative and shell out for art irrelevant to them and their interests when the collectibles market offers them things they already love without the hassle?

Josh Baer for NoReserve: As an art advisor with several clients in and around Silicon Valley, I think that non-local galleries have often introduced the wrong strategies there. What works in New York or London may not work for the engineer and tech types of Silicon Valley, who are used to a different cultural ecosystem and language, a different way of doing business. Those who do collect there, in my experience, have arrived at tech firms through finance. Many are from New York, where art and culture are more common. They may not be the famous collectors, but as CEOs or high-level executives, they have serious buying power. Galleries think these people want immersive or digital art. That is wrong, wrong, wrong. Even though many of these collectors live in houses that are small relative to their net worth, they are still more likely to want an Agnes Martin than an NFT.

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