Amazon Re-Enters Online Art Market
THE NEW YORK TIMES | ARTBEAT
By Patricia Cohen
WASHINGTON---A day after the news that Amazon’s founder and chief executive, Jeff Bezos, is buying The Washington Post, his company officially entered another cultural arena: art. On Tuesday, the online retailer announced the start of Amazon Art, where customers can buy original and limited-edition art from more than 150 dealers and 4,500 artists, ranging in price from a $10 screen print by the up-and-comer Ryan Humphrey to a $4.85 million painting by Norman Rockwell. Amazon, which worked with Sotheby’s for a short-lived experiment selling art on the Web in 1999, will now vie with other, more established competitors in the online marketplace, including Artsy and Artnet. Amazon has sought to blunt some of that competitive pressure by partnering with Paddle8, an online auction site, among other players. [link]
By Patricia Cohen
WASHINGTON---A day after the news that Amazon’s founder and chief executive, Jeff Bezos, is buying The Washington Post, his company officially entered another cultural arena: art. On Tuesday, the online retailer announced the start of Amazon Art, where customers can buy original and limited-edition art from more than 150 dealers and 4,500 artists, ranging in price from a $10 screen print by the up-and-comer Ryan Humphrey to a $4.85 million painting by Norman Rockwell. Amazon, which worked with Sotheby’s for a short-lived experiment selling art on the Web in 1999, will now vie with other, more established competitors in the online marketplace, including Artsy and Artnet. Amazon has sought to blunt some of that competitive pressure by partnering with Paddle8, an online auction site, among other players. [link]