Artsy, formally known as Art.sy Inc is a New York City based online art brokerage.[1] Its main business is developing and hosting website for numerous galleries as well as selling art for them.[2] It utilizes a search engine and database to draw connections and map relationships among works of art.[3]
The brokerage was founded by Carter Cleveland, a Princeton University computer science graduate.[4] It is currently led by Mike Steib, a former CEO of XO Group, the parent company of The Knot.[5]
Carter Cleveland, the son of an art historian,[6] founded Artsy during his senior year at Princeton University and worked on the site from his dorm room.[7] Cleveland's goal was for the site to serve as a place where users could discover art online.[8] In May 2010, Artsy participated in the New York City conference, TechCrunch Disrupt, where they competed in the Startup Battlefield and received the Yahoo! Rookie Award![9] A year later, the team demoed Artsy at the Beyeler FoundationatArt Basel (June 15, 2011).[10][11]
In 2019, it was reported that in 2018 the data for 1,070,000 accounts were stolen from Artsy.[13] The information included the name, email address, location, IP address and password SHA-512 hashed with a salt. The passwords were not stored in cleartext, but an email from Artsy encouraged users to change their passwords.[14]
Artsy currently features over 1,000,000 works by 100,000 artists on its site through partnered galleries.[17][18] As of March 2018, Artsy averaged 2.3 million unique visitors each month.[19]
Artsy is powered by The Art Genome Project — "an ongoing study of the characteristics that distinguish and connect works of art."[20] A collaboration between art historians and engineers, The Art Genome Project draws upon art-historical scholarship and artificial intelligence to assign values to artwork based on over 1211 characteristics or "genes."[21][22] These categories range from color and period to "Technique: Documentary Photography" and "Group Portrait."[21][22] The Art Genome Project aims to help users uncover works of art based on personal taste and preference to facilitate discovery of art.[20][21][22] As of 2020 the AGP was on hold for restructuring.
According to Wired, Artsy "has the potential to introduce each buyer to a wide range of artists and artworks, all of them related in some way and—this is key—most of them unknown and otherwise inaccessible to any but the most knowledgeable connoisseurs."[11]
Critics of Art.sy label The Art Genome Project forced and artificial and point to the difficulty of representing the full experience of art online.[23]
