In Autumn, leaves fall to make room for new ones to grow. We’re growing here at ArtFacts. We appreciate each and every one of your suggestions as they help us improve the site dramatically each month. Please, keep it up! And, without further ado, your updates.
The Toolbox
See something missing on an ArtFacts profile? The Toolbox is where the magical information upload happens. The input of information helps rankings fluctuate accurately. Now, you can enter your own data to streamline the process.
Artworks
If you’re an artist or a gallery member, your entered artworks will be instantly visible on your ArtFacts profile. And, if you’d like to enter an artwork for another artist, it will go into our queue before being thoroughly checked by our Editorial Team. After it’s been approved, you’ll see it online in our database and the artist’s profile.Media Library
The media library is your private media archive. As a registered user, you can put images, videos, texts of any kind. Think of it as your very own ArtFacts cloud.Give it a try by clicking the + on the bottom right corner of your screen.
Gallery Rating
The goal of the Gallery Rating is to make a step in the right direction in order to establish industry standards for good practice. To create our rating, we looked at the key characteristics of a good gallery:
Discover: a knack for discovering artists and anticipating trends, measured by counting the number of top artists that have been exhibited in a gallery during their first year on the market.
Represent: solid roster and proven career building techniques, measured by counting the number of trending artists a gallery has continuously exhibited.
Exhibit: holding a steady stream of exhibitions and devoting their space to showing art, measured by counting the points of artists that have been shown at the gallery in the past.
Involve: openly participating and competing within the gallery scene, measured by counting the number of art fairs that the gallery has participated in, taking into account the importance of the fairs themselves.
The result is a cumulative rating that appears on a gallery’s ArtFacts page and can be anywhere from 1 to 5 stars. See for yourself, and let us know what you think.
Comeback Kid: Michael Buthe
Michael Buthe was a professor at the well-known Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, as well as a prolific German artist. He died at the age of 50, but during his lifetime was very successful, participating 4 times in Documenta, having a solo show in 1980 at the Folkwang Museum Essen, and the list goes on.
At the time of his death in 1994, he held an ArtFacts rank of 91. His rank dropped continuously until 2009, when he was ranked 5738. But, in 2010, he had a sort of “rediscovery”. His rank rose again and is currently a healthy 1863. 20 years after his passing, Michael Buthe is known by a wider, and possibly younger, public.
And what’s the reasoning behind this? Important factors in his post-mortem rise have been his solo shows in New York in both 2007 and 2010 at Alexander and Bonin Gallery, a major gallery regularly participating in Art Basel. He went on to exhibit in 4 more group shows at the same gallery in 2011, 2012, and 2013.
On the new ArtFacts, you can also compare artists side-by-side, making it easier to draw your own conclusions or simply deepen your understanding of any artist’s career. Simply log into beta, click “Full Ranking” under the artist profile of your choosing, and type any name into the box under the graph to add an artist. Alternatively, you can click the “Compare” button underneath the MOST EXHIBITIONS SHOWN WITH section to have artists chosen for you. Below, we’ve shown Buthe next to some of his contemporaries.
As always, we encourage you to let us know how you use ArtFacts and send us your feedback, which is essential for us to meet your needs. Please direct questions and comments to: [email protected].
