Is Southeast African art a good investment?
As any investment advisor will tell you, past performance is no guarantee of future performance. Having said that, Southeast African material has been an excellent investment. One need only look at auction catalogues from the 1980’s and 1990’s to see how this art has escalated in value. Figurative pipes costing a few hundred dollars twenty years ago now cost up to 100 times that amount. Below are a few issues to consider when buying African art as an investment. The list is not intended to be comprehensive: Pros African art tends to be less cyclical than many other art forms e.g. paintings by contemporary artists are sometimes the fashion du jour and may see large and unpredictable swings in values. African art is typically collected by a more serious and committed collector and is not as volatile. Unlike contemporary art, the supply of African art is limited and thus the collector is insulated from major downward fluctuations.There are tax benefits when artwork is donated. In the USA,
