Art (Collecting) School

The new year always brings new resolutions. Some of the most popular, according to USA.gov, are to pay off debt, save money, drink less, and quit smoking. But maybe you had something more fun in mind. For example, to start an art collection. If that's the case, you're in luck. Spring semester is starting at universities across the country, and some are offering courses that will give the novice a quick schooling in how to amass a trove of fine art. Figure Painting will give you a rundown in a series of posts this month.

What: The Great New York Collections and Who's Behind Them
Where: New York University
When: Tuesdays, 10:00 A.M. - 11:40 A.M. OR 6:45 P.M. - 8:25 P.M., Starting February 19th
Cost: $430.00
Required Reading: Edith Wharton's False Dawn. At his father's request, a man tours Europe with the charge of buying great art. He's cut out of the family fortune when he returns with relatively obscure work — it's only later that his taste proves to be prescient.

This course looks at New York's cultural institutions of colossal import — the Met, the Whitney, the Guggenheim, and the Museum of Modern Art, to name a few — and the collectors and patrons who helped bring them into being — like Lillie P. Bliss and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, two of the trio of women responsible for the founding of MoMA in 1929. Study the greats and you might become one yourself. (Artists, after all, having been doing it for centuries.) You'll find yourself in good company. Francis Morrone, who teaches the course, says he already has some young collectors signed up. He's also anticipating lawyers and business school graduates catching up on the arts they missed in college to register. "I'm getting the impression that a lot of people like that are looking more towards building collections."

Sign up for The Great New York Collections and Who's Behind Them here.