Canal Capital 1.30 PFD (COWPP)

[MadRussian]

‘Gordon Gekko’ of the art world

It’s no coincidence that character Gordon Gekko is an art collector. For decades now Edelman has been a heavyweight in the art world, having founded art financing firm Art Assured, among other endeavors. Most recently, he became chairperson of Artbnk, which provides real-time valuation of tradeable art.

It’s a service that Edleman says aims to solve one of the biggest problems facing the art market today: the inconsistency and lack of transparency surrounding the valuation of art.

“Artbnk is a company that does a number of things. What it does that's probably most important is it can be predictive about prices,” Edleman said.

“It uses artificial intelligence to examine thousands of pieces of art that have been to auction or otherwise publicized in terms of prices. And it is able, if you give it a photograph of a work of art [to determine] the provenance, the size, and the medium — it is able to project what should be the next price.”