Ramtin Naimi

I don't actually get involved in any of that because I don't have time for it.

I don't think I've ever gone to actual exhibition opening.

It's part of the upside and downside of being in San Francisco is there's no art in San Francisco.

I don't think I've ever bought anything that I saw in person before buying it.

I've only ever bought things off previews.

Yeah, because you have to find time to actually fly somewhere and go see something in person.

And my schedule, unfortunately, does not lend me to have that leisure to do that.

But I think it's very common in the New York world, especially among finance guys who are active art collectors.

I think it becomes competitive dynamics of, oh, you have one of these.

I actually have the better one.

Oh, we're both fighting over the same painting.

I'm the one who got it.

That's where the galleries leverage those competitive dynamics to do what's ultimately best for the artists.

At the end of the day, artists actually don't want their art in people's homes.

They want their art in museums.

They don't want their art to go in someone's living room where only 20 people will ever see it.

They want it to be hung up in the MoMA where millions of people will see it over time.

That's why you see a lot of these guys on the boards of those museums because those museums want to ultimately foster the relationships of the people that have the greatest collections.

Those collections, at least a large portion of them, one day end up in their museum.

That's why museum affiliation is also a really great way to access great art because galleries are more inclined to give great paintings to people who are on the boards of the MoMA and the Met and the Whitney and the Guggenheim because they know that more likely than not, this painting, maybe not tomorrow, but eventually will end up in the collection of this museum.