Artsy, formally known as Art.sy Inc is a New York City based online art brokerage.[1] Its main business is developing and hosting website for numerous galleries as well as selling art for them.[2] It utilizes a search engine and database to draw connections and map relationships among works of art.[3]
The brokerage was founded by Carter Cleveland, a Princeton University computer science graduate.[4] It is currently led by Jeffrey Yin, who was appointed CEO in June 2024.[5]
History
ARTSY Headquarters (35063018534)
Carter Cleveland, the son of an art historian,[6] founded Artsy during his senior year at Princeton University and worked on the site from his dorm room.[7] Cleveland's goal was for the site to serve as a place where users could discover art online.[8] 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![9] A year later, the team demoed Artsy at the Beyeler Foundation at Art Basel (June 15, 2011).[10][11]
In 2019, it was reported that in 2018 the data for 1,070,000 accounts were stolen from Artsy.[13] 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.[14]
Corporate affairs
Financials
Since launching, Artsy has raised a total of $100 million from individuals in the worlds of art, tech, and media.[15][16][2]
Products (website and app)
Artsy currently features over 1,000,000 works by 100,000 artists on its site through partnered galleries.[17][18] As of March 2018, Artsy averaged 2.3 million unique visitors each month.[19]
When Artsy launched in October 2011, its main product was The Art Genome Project — "an ongoing study of the characteristics that distinguish and connect works of art."[20] A collaboration between art historians and engineers, and led by art historian Matthew Israel, The Art Genome Project drew upon art-historical scholarship and artificial intelligence to assign values to artwork based on eventually as many as 1211 characteristics or "genes."[21][22][23] These categories ranged from color and period to "Technique: Documentary Photography" and "Group Portrait."[21][22] The Art Genome Project aimed to help users uncover works of art based on personal taste and preference to facilitate the discovery of art.[20][21][22] 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."[11]
Critics of Art.sy label The Art Genome Project forced and artificial and point to the difficulty of representing the full experience of art online.[24]
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