If you wanted to purchase a painting by a red-hot contemporary artist a few years ago, you were probably told to get in line. Some galleries had dozens, even hundreds, of prospective buyers and only a handful of works available. But there was a reliable way to get to the front of the pack: a mechanism known in the art business as “buy one, give one”.
Bogo, as the sales tactic has come to be known, is used by galleries to tamp down speculation while supporting their artists’ long-term prospects. To secure preferential access to an in-demand artist’s work, a collector agrees to buy two paintings (and they are almost always paintings, the most commercial of media) by that artist. The collector then donates one to a museum and keeps the other for themselves.
Proponents see the arrangement as a win-win-win. The artist receives institutional imprimatur, the museum gets a desirable gift and the collector gets their hands on a work they desperately want. Meanwhile, the gallery can right-size demand by raising the bar to buy a painting and keep their star artists happy.
During the market’s recent heyday, from 2021 to 2023, bogo deals became de rigueur. “It felt like there was always the bogo conversation,” says the collector and art adviser Adam Green, who estimates he has facilitated dozens of such deals on behalf of clients. Institutions as large as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, as well as smaller ones like the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, and the Columbus Museum of Art in Ohio, have acquired work through bogo donations, sources say.
As the market contracted over the past two years, the volume of these arrangements fell accordingly. “The economics aren’t what they used to be,” Green says. The shift away from bogo deals is a sign of the changing power dynamics among collectors, galleries and museums—and it may have a ripple effect on young artists’ careers. Whether those effects are positive or negative depends on whom you ask.
Who benefits most from bogos?
Bogo is not a post-pandemic invention. Over the past 15 years, its prevalence has risen and fallen with the tide of the ultra-contemporary art market. Michael Darling, the former chief curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, recalls working with the city’s now-shuttered Shane Campbell Gallery on one such deal for a Mark Grotjahn painting back in 2010. “That’s when those were in the $300,000 to $400,000 range retail, but already there was a lot of demand and speculation,” he says. “The collector could have assumed it would be triple the price the next year.”
Artist Mark Grotjahn is one in-demand contemporary artist whose works have been sold under bogo deals New York Times/Redux/eyevine
Two factors contributed to the contraction of bogo, experts say. First, it is considerably less competitive to buy a work of contemporary art than it was three years ago. Bogo deals helped less established collectors—those who do not sit on a major museum board or have a private museum to their name—gain access to in-demand art. “Not all collectors had to do a bogo—just the ones deemed not good enough to buy a work outright by a given artist,” says the art adviser Benjamin Godsill. Today, “any collector is a good collector”.
The second factor in the bogo decline is the rise of primary market prices. In response to rampant speculation, many galleries have increased prices to more closely align with auction sales. This has diminished the bogo value proposition. Collectors can no longer buy two works from a gallery for less than it costs to buy one at auction. And since the fair market value of those works no longer outpaces their retail prices, collectors are unable to no longer get the benefit of a hefty tax deduction.
Bogo deals have not disappeared entirely. Like the market for ultra-contemporary art, they have just become more selective. “Bogos are still happening, just for a smaller group of artists where there is a meaningful gap between primary and secondary market,” Green says. Sources say that galleries are still pursuing bogo deals for painters including Le Hei Di, Louis Fratino and Lucy Bull.
In this new environment, it is also increasingly common for galleries to ask collectors to make a cash donation to support a museum’s acquisition of an in-demand artist’s work instead of donating it outright. This solution—call it “bogs” (buy one, give some)—is less expensive for the collector and gives the museum the flexibility to make a selection on its own terms.
A balancing act for museums
Some art-world figures are ambivalent about bogo. Kevin Tucker, the chief curator of the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, notes that these deals can create an “odd dynamic” for museums, who want to avoid alienating donors while being discerning about what they acquire. “We want to make sure we’re working with the artist and getting what we feel is the best representative example of the work they produce,” he says.
Bogo deals also risk creating the perception that collectors are driving museums’ decision-making, while placing early-stage works in institutions before the artist has the chance to mature. “There will be a look-back period where it’s like, ‘these 40 artists ended up with the same 12 museums on their CV’,” says one dealer. “They didn’t have any proper exhibitions. It’s board members trying to increase the value of their collection.”
Another complicating factor is that, as storage becomes more expensive, museums are increasingly recognising that “even if they are getting a work for free, it’s not free”, says Kibum Kim, a partner at the Los Angeles gallery Commonwealth and Council.
The decline of the bogo deal is symbolic of today’s market moment, when museums and collectors hold more cards than the gallery—and, often, the artist. “Everyone,” Kim says, “is being more deliberate about what work they want.”