Art sales platform artVested makes debut

Wisconsin’s arts and culture sector contributed more than $12.4 billion to the state’s economy in 2023, according to data from Imagine MKE, continuing a strong rebound from the pandemic. In recent years, the sector’s economic output has surpassed industries including agriculture and forestry, utilities, education services and mining.

Yet despite the sector’s economic scale, many working artists struggle to capture a sustainable share of the value their work generates. Traditional gallery models often require artists to give up as much as half of the sale price of a piece, while online marketplaces can take commissions ranging from 25% to 50%.

Two Wisconsin arts community leaders believe technology could help rebalance that equation.

Maureen Ragalie, managing director of gener8tor Art, and John Brogan, CEO of the Bank of Kaukauna and cofounder of Fork Farms, are launching an online platform called artVested. The product is designed to help visual artists retain more revenue from their work.

The platform will be tested publicly later this month during a one-night exhibition titled The Art Thingy, Part 1, scheduled for March 28 from 5–8 p.m. at Task Creative in Cudahy.

Ragalie said the idea grew out of several years of conversations between her and Brogan about the structural challenges artists face when selling their work. Many of those ideas were captured in a shared digital “notes app,” where the pair collected concepts for how technology might address those challenges.

“We didn’t necessarily have language for what we were creating,” she said. “We just called it ‘the art thingy.’”

“Artists aren’t receiving royalties from the resale of their work,” she said. “If they’re selling through a gallery, the gallery is often taking a 50% commission. If they’re selling through online platforms, those platforms can take anywhere from 25% to 50% of the sale.”

The artVested platform is designed to test a different sales model.

Instead of taking a large commission from the artist, the platform asks buyers to pay a 5% processing fee, with the remainder of the sale going directly to the artist. In the fine art market, where individual works often sell for thousands of dollars or more, even small changes to commission structures can significantly affect how much income an artist ultimately receives.