Masterworks

Masterworks (Masterworks Advisers LLC) is an American financial services company operating in the art investment market. It acquires individual works of art, files them with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission as public offerings, and then sells shares in those works to investors through its website, allowing fractional ownership of paintings that would otherwise only be accessible to wealthy buyers. The company is headquartered at Brookfield Place in New York City and serves investors in the United States and roughly 100 other countries.

The platform's offerings have included works by Banksy, George Condo, Cecily Brown, Simone Leigh, Claude Monet and Andy Warhol. Its first offering was a Warhol listed at $1.996 million; ahead of SEC approval the company also purchased a Monet for $4 million. By February 2022 Masterworks had bought more than 100 paintings worth nearly $450 million. Alongside the investment platform, the company established Level & Co., a gallery on Manhattan's Upper East Side that serves as a meeting point for art dealers and wealthy investors.

A central element of the business is a proprietary database of historical art auction results. The team sourced and purchased paper auction catalogs dating back to the 1950s together with post-sale price lists, and manually digitized them, using repeat-sale data on the same paintings as comparables to assess price momentum and select works for securitization.

Founding story

Scott Lynn founded Masterworks in 2017 to make the art market accessible to ordinary investors, identifying art as a large asset class lacking an investment product. Building the first securitized vehicle required roughly a year and a half to two years of work with the SEC; the company later reported launching such vehicles weekly.

Business model

Masterworks buys physical artworks, registers each as a securitized offering with the SEC, and sells shares in the individual work to investors on its platform; investors realize returns when a work is sold, with the company reporting more than $25 million paid out to investors in 2022. Minimum investments began at $20 and were subsequently increased.

Traction

Over 800,000 members and more than $900 million in assets under management as of April 2024 (reported at $822 million in late 2023); more than 100 paintings acquired worth nearly $450 million by February 2022; over $25 million paid out to investors in 2022.

Latest developments

As of April 2024 the company reported over 800,000 members and more than $900 million in assets under management, and had approximately 200 employees. It established the Level & Co. gallery in Manhattan's Upper East Side.