Masterworks IPOs classic paintings

The Future. A new platform called Masterworks is bringing the ease of retail-investing apps like Robinhood and Public to the world of fine art. With Masterworks, artworks can be split into investable stocks, which may introduce younger generations to beloved historical paintings. Affordability is accessibility.

Stock art
NFT cryptoart may be all the rage, but one company is bringing real, physical art into the piecemeal investment economy.

• Masterworks is breaking up classic pieces of art (not actually breaking) into investable shares that people can buy, sell, and trade.
• Shares can be bought by users in $20 increments.
• Investors make money by selling shares on the secondary market or by waiting for the artwork to sell whole, which will then give investors a pro-rata proceeds.

Works by Banksy, Monet and Warhol are available for investment.

Markup
Investing in portions of artworks is a practice as old as Picasso, whose paintings were part of a fund called The Skin of the Bear, which was run by businessman and art critic Andre Level. Since then, the British Rail Pension Fund and Anthea have been success stories for the deep-pocketed.