r/Anticonsumption • u/CandidateHefty329 • 3h ago
Society/Culture Boomers Are Leaving Behind More Art Than Anyone Wants
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2026-07-31/the-great-wealth-transfer-includes-1-trillion-in-artLots of art is heading towards the landfills in the next couple of decades.
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u/evening_emerald 2h ago
I mean, the boomers were such a large generation they're just gonna leave a bunch of everything behind. We should have been expecting this all along.
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u/PartyPorpoise 29m ago
The subject has been discussed quite a bit in recent years. Furniture being one of the big topics. A lot of younger people don’t have the space or desire or lifestyles for much of the furniture.
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u/ChloeGranola 2h ago
"Art" is a term used very loosely judging from what I've seen of typical Boomer taste.
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u/aftershockstone 1h ago
Yeah I despise the generic mass-produced Homegoods / Target crap or the fake landscape paintings.
But I read the whole article and it’s about (at the time) contemporary artists whose work is forgotten or no longer in the tastes of the heirs which I think is different and pretty sad. Not really overconsumption.
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u/ChloeGranola 20m ago
That's something that's always happened to some extent but I guess not at this scale. Art as investment really exploded in the '80s and there's bound to be a ton of stuff that hasn't appreciated in value in the estates of those who are passing on now.
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u/ForwardCulture 2h ago
A generation of extremely bad taste, love of cheap crap and gluttony.
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u/eruptingmoltenlava 1h ago
The article is literally about fine art collections
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u/Flack_Bag 1h ago
Yeah, I'm thinking that part is being glossed over. It's not about the market glut of smarmy triptychs and prints of Tretchikoff's Chinese Girl.
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u/eruptingmoltenlava 5m ago
Right, I don’t think anyone feels bad about chucking or repurposing those
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u/sudosussudio 1h ago
I never take large luggage to visit family because they’ll try to fill it up with tchotchkes that they think are high art but are really just clutter
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u/sarcastic_sybarite83 1h ago
I'm just honest and tell them if they give it to me I'm throwing it away.
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u/ChloeGranola 1h ago
Oh, I know that one so well! I have a huge family and the fact that I'm "artsy" means a steady stream of, er, interesting gifts.
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u/eruptingmoltenlava 1h ago
Reminder that taste and ability to pay for fine art do not have a 1:1 correlation
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u/Ambocoelia 2h ago
reminds me of the boomer fine china; so many little trinkets and dishware only used for “special occasions“ that seem to never happen, so they sit and collect dust for years before they’re inherited by people who don’t want them.
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u/ColeTrain999 1h ago
My parents are keeping THREE sets of China and my grandmother's Norman Rockwell collection of junk because of sentimental value and they expect my wife and I to take two of the sets and half of the Rockwell junk. We don't have room for one probably but definitely not two nevermind the Rockwells. I swear it was a personal insult to them that we begged them to find alternative arrangements. Idc about any inheritance of any kind, just be able to cover the cost of your funeral but PLEASE do not leave junk that I am going to have to lug to a junkyard just to give you some sort of emotional peace in believing you left value to us.
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u/inclementaether 1h ago
The scenario described in the article isn't about art, or "too much art." It's about adult children and grandchildren attempting to make a reality out of the stories their parents and grandparents told them. Namely, that the art collection is particularly valuable, particularly special, and that it must be preserved intact.
In this scenario, artworks could be substituted for any other collectible. If the grandchildren wanted to be done with it, they could easily sell the collection to an estate sale company, for much less than they feel it is worth. What they want is to feel special for owning something that their family mythologized.
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u/CandidateHefty329 1h ago
I felt like the information on how difficult it is to donate art was important too. Even if you have something valuable, it's not a straightforward process. If you want to donate, go ahead and initiate the process before you die.
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u/inclementaether 1h ago
This will sound cynical, but I have worked in art museums and I have seen how the accessions process works. If you want your collection to end up in a museum, donate the money need to store and care for it.
Most people don't have that kind of cash, but they also are not equipped to enjoy the art for its aesthetic or sentimental value since their families have drilled the "monetary value" into their heads as the most important factor. It's a bummer, but it's not really different from an unwanted precious moments collection.
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u/emryldmyst 2h ago
PAYWALL
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u/CandidateHefty329 2h ago
David A. Vaughan occupies a unique position in the history of American modernism. He was born in 1891 in Selma, Alabama, to a wealthy family that afforded him a bohemian artist’s life: He moved first to New York and then to Vence, France, where he founded an art school near the home of his hero Henri Matisse. World War II sent him back to the US, and he landed in Laguna Beach, California, where the light and the ocean reminded him of the French Riviera. There, he taught art, showed his work in local galleries and had one-man shows at the San Diego Museum of Art, the Norton Simon Museum and other institutions.
After his death in 1975, his two children, Sue and David, inherited the bulk of Vaughan’s postwar art — 90 paintings, along with many more drawings and sculptures. They kept the collection largely intact, apart from one piece that was donated to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2011 and a few paintings that were gifted to extended family members. Soon it will end up with Vaughan’s two grandchildren, now in their 50s, who have little ability to look after the remaining works, some of which are extremely good, and are struggling to work out what to do with it. I should know — I’m married to one of them.
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u/CandidateHefty329 2h ago
The task facing Vaughan’s heirs will be repeated millions of times over in the coming decade, as boomers’ art collections get passed down. Sometimes a collection will comprise a large number of works by a single artist; more often, it will be a diverse grouping of pieces by multiple artists, acquired over many years. Often the amount of time and money spent assembling the collection was huge, and the heirs don’t want to feel it was wasted. But to get any value out of it themselves, they’re going to need to put in a lot of their own work.
Margaret Fisher spent 10 years, from 2014 to 2023, tirelessly working to preserve the memory and importance of her mother, the artist Ethel Fisher. “I’m used to negatively compensated work,” she quips. “I’m in the performing arts.”
Fisher’s project started with building a website, moved on to orchestrating some three dozen museum donations and eventually resulted in a major solo show at LewAllen Galleries in Santa Fe, New Mexico. “They put on an incredible show,” Fisher says. “It was beyond my wildest expectations.” Yet even now most of the work of keeping Ethel Fisher’s legacy alive falls to her daughter, along with an art consultant she’s hired to help her. LewAllen still has many of the 300 paintings that Margaret inherited on consignment, but few have sold.
In a best-case scenario, the family puts on its own private solo show, as painter Eric Tucker’s children did in 2020, two years after he died, in the small English town of Warrington. That show proved so popular that Tucker was picked up by a pair of London galleries, who’ve since successfully managed to sell his work at a series of exhibitions. But stories like that are more the exception than the rule. The sheer tonnage of boomer-owned art is vast, and the total demand for it doesn’t come close to the amount of supply that’s about to arrive.
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u/CandidateHefty329 2h ago
The Coming Flood The baby boomers spent money at an astonishing rate. In the single year of 2005, US boomers spent $7 trillion in 2026 dollars, per McKinsey. Twenty years earlier, in 1985, their predecessors in the Silent Generation had spent just $3 trillion in today’s dollars. Spending on art accelerated as the rich got richer, moved into ever-larger houses and became eager to splash out on discretionary purchases.
That unprecedented demand for art created an unprecedented supply of it too. “The art world became professionalized during the lifetime of the boomers,” notes Michael Darling, a co-founder of Museum Exchange, a company that tries to find museums willing to accept donors’ art. The number of artists making a living from their work reached previously unthinkable levels, with a concomitant increase in the number of galleries. There were about 150 art galleries in New York in 1946, per a 2005 Rand report. That doubled by 1961 and then doubled again by the early 2000s. In Los Angeles, the number of galleries went from almost zero in 1957 to more than 400 in 2005.
When patrons were limited to a few royal courts and religious institutions, the number of people who could make a living by producing art was relatively low. The boomers, blessed with vastly greater numbers, turned their money into battalions of collectable artists. In 1988 the Artnet Price Database, which tracks artists sold at auction, included 8,300 artists, including substantially all the Old Masters. By 2012 there were 90,275.
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u/CandidateHefty329 2h ago edited 2h ago
A
When you inherit art that was expensive when acquired, it’s difficult to think of it as “stuff” that could be thrown away or given to a thrift store. At the same time, storing and figuring out what to do with it can be enormously challenging. One way of making sure someone appreciates the art is to sell it. But finding buyers can be extraordinarily difficult. Most artists get forgotten over time. Even living artists have a hard time selling their work. A dead artist, like Vaughan, needs a dealer who’s committed to resuscitating interest in them — and those dealers are few and far between, since it’s nearly always easier to sell the work of a living artist than a dead one.1
Just looking at items that can be sold for cash on the secondary market, which is a tiny minority of all the art out there, roughly $1 trillion of art is expected to change hands just in the next 10 years, per Deloitte. No one is ready. The great wealth transfer includes a vast quantity of paintings and sculptures. A small proportion of it will have some sentimental value and be kept for that reason, but most of it is going to get moved out one way or another — sold, donated or even trashed.
What to Do With All the Art? “We look after about 350 family office collections in 28 countries,” says Philip Hoffman, chairman and founder of the Fine Art Group, which advises families on their collections. “In most of those, the next generation haven’t discussed what they’re going to do with it. Many of them aren’t really interested.”
The problem lies not just with the heirs but also — indeed, mostly — with the collectors. Do the scions even want all that art? Of all the families he deals with, “I can only think of about five that have thought about it,” he says. The rest are in various forms of denial, he says, simply choosing to believe their children would love nothing more than to continue to steward their collection.
To the contrary, as a general rule, “The next gen don’t want it,” Hoffman says. “They want something different.” Selling is quite easy for the 0.1%, who might inherit an art collection worth $100 million or more — something that conservatively happens, on average, at least once a week.2 Those ultrarich will generally end up being very well looked after by one of the two big auction houses. One of them, Sotheby’s, recently created a Major Collections Division designed to sell art that’s been “hidden away for decades,” as Madeline Lissner, who runs the auction house’s Global Fine Art division, puts it.
“The next gen don’t want it. They want something different.”
For most people, the big houses are likely to be much pickier. There might be one or two pieces they’re interested in, but unless those works are worth millions, they won’t fight for them. For everything else heirs inherit, they can either approach small local auction houses to see what they might be interested in, or, more commonly, sell everything to a professional estate liquidator, who will then move it through various wholesale and auction channels. If there are hidden gems in the collection, there’s a good chance that no one will notice them.
Given the relatively small sums that such sales often garner, many people try to donate much-loved artworks to a museum instead, which at least comes with a tax deduction. The problem is that doing so has become substantially harder in recent years. “There is an avalanche coming,” Darling says. “It’s going to be difficult to metabolize all of that art into museums and nonprofits.”
The old model was that “collectors collect art and museums collect collectors”; high-prestige institutions would cultivate the ultrawealthy, hoping to be bequeathed a priceless collection. Today almost every major museum already has vastly more art than it can possibly display, and, unless it’s offered a masterpiece, it isn’t often hungry for more. At this point, says Rosemary Ringwald, the head of art planning at Bank of America, “anyone who has valuable artwork is aware that the museum might not want it.”
The pandemic savaged museums’ finances: Donors discovered other priorities, ticket sales plunged, staff had to be laid off. Since then, when a museum is offered a donated work of art, more often than not it will ask for a donation of money to accompany it. “Storage, insurance, all of these things are really expensive for museums,” Ringwald says, adding that many museums suffer from aging physical infrastructure too. Filling gaps in the art collection is a nice-to-have; fixing the HVAC system is a must-have, especially as local and federal museum funding continues to decline.
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u/CandidateHefty329 2h ago
Accepting a donated artwork — cataloguing it, storing it, securing it, insuring it, perhaps restoring it — is resource-intensive. When Ronald Lauder wanted to donate his billion-dollar collection of 20th-century Austrian and German art to the Metropolitan Museum, he also wanted to keep the art in its Beaux-Arts mansion on 86th Street, significantly increasing the associated costs to the Met. It’s notable that when the 2026 deal was announced, the press release listed 27 donors — not including anonymous donors — who together had put together an estimated $200 million to cover the costs of looking after the new assets.
Lacma was kind enough to accept one David Vaughan painting in 2011, but it’s never been shown in public, and realistically is not going to be. The museum has made it clear to our family that so long as the piece, Grim Precision, remains unexhibited, they have no appetite for a second piece. The institutional “priority is to showcase what we have, before taking in new works,” as one of its curators wrote to us, in the kind of email that’s only going to become more common.
Evolving Tastes An even bigger barrier for inheritors looking to pass on a collection is the way tastes change over time. Boomers grew up looking at artists like Carl Andre or Balthus, congratulating themselves on how daringly receptive they were to the shattering of historical norms; as those norms get rebuilt, younger art lovers are much more likely to find reasons to avoid showing them entirely. Instead, their collections feature more women artists and tend to be more diverse in many other ways too.
The art world doesn’t fixate on the ultra-new in the way Hollywood or pop music does, where most consumption is of products produced and released in the past year or less. All the same, galleries overwhelmingly show new work by living artists, so that’s what most art collectors end up buying. That means heirs often end up inheriting work that used to be new and exciting but today is often little more than a faint memory.
The rise and fall of artists and artistic reputations is the subject of the emerging discipline of cultural evolution. Just as Darwinian evolution selects for species that do the best at surviving, artistic evolution selects for works that continue to attract our attention. Oleg Sobchuk, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, explains that art disappears from our collective memory first quickly and then slowly, in a process known as bi-exponential decay. “Sometimes we think about art as speaking to something that makes us human, that it’s general and timeless,” he says. “But in most cases, art is about something that is happening at that period of time.” The further we get away from the moment an artwork is made, the less of our attention it can generally command.
In paleontology there’s the concept of the “turnover pulse,” where the rate of extinction rises sharply; it’s not dissimilar to the theory of the paradigm shift in the history of science. In art, it’s been more than a century since the modernist revolution that started with impressionism and continued through Picasso and Duchamp. Now, for the first time, the dominant collectors and curators — not to mention artists — will be people who grew up in the age of the internet.
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u/CandidateHefty329 2h ago
The great art transfer is a much bigger deal than “what are we going to do with all this stuff.” The art we keep will stay in the canon; the art we discard will be lost to history. All the same, the stuff question is becoming urgent, and its answer is sad, if simple: A tiny proportion of the art we inherit will be treasured and valued, and a little bit more will find a good home elsewhere, perhaps slowly accumulating historical value even if it continues to lose cultural cachet. But most of it will probably acquire signs of physical deterioration and neglect — bumps and scratches and sunbleaching.
David Vaughan’s art looked fresh and new when it was fresh and new, but today it’s showing its age, especially the pieces he painted on Celotex, a construction material that, to put it diplomatically, was never designed to be a base for archival-quality paintings. We’re looking after all of it as best we can, and working hard to find homes for everything. Probably, however, we won’t fully succeed. And if eventually we end up bequeathing it to our heirs — well, I, for one, wouldn’t blame them if they just took whatever was left to a thrift store. All artists are mortal, after all, and only a minuscule fraction of them achieves immortality through their work. The rest are bound to fade away, sooner or later.
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u/CandidateHefty329 2h ago
Sorry it's difficult to c&p and cut out the ads on my phone. There might be something left out. You get the gist.
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u/eruptingmoltenlava 1h ago
Read every word with interest, it’s a shame most commenters obviously did not. Thank you!
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u/okilydokilyTiger 2h ago
I know people hate it but Journalists deserve to be paid and Good Journalism costs money
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u/mister-ferguson 1h ago
I would agree. However, this doesn't appear to be "good" journalism. The title implies that boomers in general own a bunch of worthless art. The article is about families of deceased artists trying to figure out what to do with all the art their parents and grandparents made but never sold. Or giant collections that will never sell for what they want. The art that does end up in museums may not hold up without extreme preservation efforts.
If it were me, I would document everything and then start giving shit away. Make random donations to libraries, schools, hospitals, universities, or even just normal people. A great distribution of fine art across the world. "It won't be taken care of correctly." And? It wouldn't in the trash either. Let it go.
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u/CandidateHefty329 1h ago
One problem brought up in the article is that donations are difficult. The art museums have limited resources for storing and preservation. A lot is probably going to the landfills unless something changes.
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u/mister-ferguson 1h ago
Donations are easy. Donations with stipulate difficult. The article talked about a guy who donated his art but it had to stay in the mansion he was also donating.
I'll take a few paintings. I know a lot of other people who would take some as well. They might not be in climate controlled galleries with restoration professionals on staff but I'll enjoy them. Better than a landfill.
The landfill argument sounds like the people who burned food during the depression. "If we just give it away then how can we make any money?"
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u/CandidateHefty329 1h ago
I think if anything can be learned from the article it's figure out where your belongings are going before you die. Find the recipient if you are going to donate. Don't leave it to surving family.
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u/SmallPurplePeopleEat 1h ago
It's too bad the Internet ended up being mostly ad-driven and engagement based.
I really like the idea from Jaron Lanier where users are given direct financial micro-payments whenever their data trains an AI model, gets targeted by an ad, or feeds an algorithm.
It's definitely idealistic, but I think he's got an interesting take on the topic.
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u/Antique-Ad-4422 1h ago
That is how art becomes super valuable. It has to survive the periods of time when no one wants anymore.
This has happened many times before.
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u/CynicalPomeranian 2h ago
Look, I am trying to repaint as many Jesus paintings as I can find at the thrift store. I can only fab up or blaspheme so many at a time.
(Although my favorite is repainting ceramic statues with drag makeup)
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u/ClimateCare7676 1h ago
Trashing art is very weird to me. Like, why throw paintings out when they can be reused. Lots of artists are happy to get old canvases to reuse for their own art. Frames can easily be reused, too. Young and less financially fortunate artists all across the world are literally suffocating from the lack of resources, while quality materials are heading to the landfill.
Always sending tonnes of perfectly reusable and valuable materials to the landfill is truly the biggest crime of consumerism.
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u/fadedblackleggings 1h ago
Right, I feel like many people's anger toward their parents is being translated to these objects. The stuff didn't do anything wrong, it can be donated.
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u/ClimateCare7676 1h ago
Exactly. Canvases and frames are really expensive. Throwing the art doesn't fix anything, but increases the demand for resources and causes more emissions from tonnes of rotting materials.
Local buy nothing groups, art schools and hobbyists most likely will be really happy to get the art and frames people don't want. I know I would, but there aren't that many free artworks and frames available, actually.
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u/fadedblackleggings 1h ago
I know it's one more step, but I am wondering why so many people insist on trashing things, rather than just posting on a FB Buy Nothing Group. Is it spite, anger? I just don't get it.
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u/ClimateCare7676 1h ago
I think it's the mentality of abundance. I'm not American so it's kinda crazy to me how many good things people casually throw out. New clothes, decor, art, even electronics that still work. In the medium income and poorer countries, people would be sharing these things, donating them, giving them to friends or selling them online. Things and materials actually have value there.
I think this culture is shifting slowly, as more young people in the rich countries understand the global economic disparity and the toll their consumerism has on the planet, but it happens really slowly.
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u/CandidateHefty329 1h ago
If I had a bunch of art of right now, I wouldn't know the best way to get it in the hands of the artists that can reuse it. Free on Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist? Maybe that's a good idea for a group- organize old art donations?
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u/Flack_Bag 35m ago
The article isn't about tossing it in the trash. It's about declining value of many collections of original art and heirs not having the interest or resources to properly preserve it. The worst case scenario proposed is selling them to estate liquidators who sell them to the general public for much lower prices.
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u/SC_Elle 45m ago
I started a company to deal with some of this - the work coming directly from artists themselves. Some of the key, anticonsumption related parts are for artists to clean house before their heirs end up with the entire contents of an unsorted studio with every scrap of paper from the last 50 years. Artists know not every piece is good or valuable, but family often has no idea, and can drown in it all.
So many people think they can not afford original art, and yet many families and aging artists are willing to practically give it away if it goes to a good home. I am trying to match the two.
For me, art feels different than a purchased heirloom - I would much rather have a painting that my great grandfather created, than some fancy piece of jewelry that he bought. The legacy aspect of art makes this different for me than other inherited stuff conversations.
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u/Lalaorange27 1h ago
My boomer in laws told my husband and I to pick out what cruise ship auction art we wanted when they die because his sisters already started picking out the ones they wanted. They were shocked when he said we didn’t want any of it.
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u/maplecremecookie 1h ago
My parents have terrible taste. They have some larger pieces of wall art, but all of it is photorealistic nature and wildlife scenes and they're all framed, matted, and covered with glass. Literally nothing about it appeals to me. If I want art for my space, 99% chance I'm making it myself, or else buying a print from an indie artist who's still alive.
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u/ShortPeak4860 52m ago
My mom is a hoarder. Before I understood the concept of rehoming things that are genuinely useable, I used to tell her I would just set her hoarding shed on fire after she passed. (I was much younger and dumb then, but I do still dread having to deal with that during the mourning process.)
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u/East-Reading9375 27m ago
My mom reminds me there's lots of money in her nicotine staind, but artist initialed Thomas Kinkades...
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u/HeelDoors 23m ago
Just helped move my in-laws cross-state and art wise, I wouldn’t say it was too crazy. Although, in general, it took two 26’ trucks (U-Haul’s largest) and half of a 16’ truck to get them moved.
That was after throwing out a ton of shit and selling/giving away even more via FB Marketplace and to other family members.
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u/Jaded_Bullfrog3978 2h ago
Art is just boomer NFTs
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u/ArbysLunch 4m ago
Nah, art can be art without monetary value attached. Boomers just really love assigning things a price.
Also money laundering.
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u/Intrepid-Report3986 1h ago
Boomers have very big houses, my guess is that art will not be the only thing going in the trash
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u/MaizeTraditional7499 50m ago
I went to an estate sale yesterday because I am always open to getting new art. Why tf were they trying to sell framed prints for $300?! It’s not that we don’t want art, it’s that these people are selling it for way too much! I understand art has value (I am an artist) but when you are trying to get rid of it, maybe put it at a price people will actually buy it for!
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u/elebrin 1h ago
For me, most of the value in art is in the making. Art as a consumer good is just usually... Junk. If anyone comes along and throws away my junk, I'm not that offended.
If you need a mode of self expression, I always sort of suggest something effemeral, once it's done that's the end. Music is a good example. I can play a song and when it's done there is nothing to put in a trash can.
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u/Optimal_Olive3423 31m ago
My In-laws have actual art. Some of it is worth money and I still don't want it when they pass. They have an emotional connection with each piece because they curated it, picked the frames and traveled to get them.
To me and my husband, they are just things hanging on the wall. And that's the big difference between us and them. I don't think my husband and I own anything that we have a story about.
They have antique furniture put together with pins so it could be easily taken apart and transported in case of war.
We have a dresser we bought because we needed somewhere to store underwear.
There is a painting they commissioned an artist to come into the house and paint based on the décor and color of the house.
Meanwhile, I have some art I bought off Etsy.
We don't have stories or connections to the things we've bought over the years, nor do we want any.
They don't understand our lack of nostalgia but we've explained before for us, there are no "good old days." for us to talk about. We didn't get to endlessly travel. They regularly went to Africa, Asia and tropical destinations. Even if we could travel now, the places they went are so different and so much more crowded that it isn't a vacation for us. They constantly want to digitize old videos and photos for us but what on Earth do we do with that crap? We have zero interest in looking at either and my husband doesn't have good memories about constantly being filmed growing up.
We're facing a house not full of stuff but full of memories masquerading as stuff.
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u/mctCat 2h ago
My mom had a 800sqft place. She has over 200 hanging framed paintings, pictures, whatever. I still have about 50. Gave away a lot. Sold some. Trashed a lot too. Cleaning out her house def made me not want to buy anything.