Scott Reyburn’s strong piece on Larry’s List includes this thought experiment. But when you do the math ($500m) and think about the volume of Contemporary art sold at auction last year (nearly $3bn) and privately er l(anyone’s guess), this number looks very low:

Typically, high-net-worth individuals and ultrahigh-net-worth individuals are told by their financial advisers not to spend more than 5 percent of their net worth on so-called investments of passion. If we extrapolate the data of the art report, this means that as many as 10,000 people are spending a minimum of $50,000 a year on contemporary art.

New Report Builds a Profile of the Elusive Art Collector  (NYTimes.com)