40+ year old girl playing an interior designer game

I was having a conversation with a director of the art gallery. She seems to be a bit frustrated with the last visitor which I met face to face at the door. The director was a bit frustrated that often the visitors are looking for art to match their sofas. In my old country people were buying carpets to cover the walls. In United States people are buying large “abstract art” for the same reason. Canvases are large, meaningless, and often colorless to match drapery and furniture from “restoration hardware”.


That is what you sell when your clients are the well-to-do women that are acting out their childhood fantasy of being an interior designer.

There is a big difference between fine art and interior design. Just like there is a difference between fine jewelry and daily ware jewelry, fine dining and “eating out”. Fine things exist for themselves. They are true luxury.

Can you convert a 40+ year old girl playing an interior designer game into a collector of the art? I think not. Her fantasy is not in being an art collector, human anthropologist or a historically significant figure that is destined to write a legacy. Her fantasy is a glamorous interior designer that she wanted to be or she dreamed to be one day. She is decorating her nest. She does not care about sophisticated technique of the artist etc. She is matching colors. She wants it to be big.