Why the Future of Art Advising Is About Strategy, Not Access

In a recent interview with the Observer, Megan Fox Kelly discusses how inheritance, technology and professional rigor are reshaping the art market.

Megan Fox Kelly, recognized on this year’s Observer’s Art Power Index, has spent more than two decades shaping what it means to be an art advisor at the highest level. Through her eponymous firm, she manages more than $3.5 billion in art assets for collectors, estates and institutions, including the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, the Terra Foundation for American Art and the estate of Robert De Niro Sr. Her practice bridges the worlds of finance, scholarship and collection stewardship, helping clients build and sustain cultural value across generations.

Power in the art world is shifting through forces both familiar and newly urgent: technology, globalization and inheritance. For artists and collectors alike, the next great challenge, Fox Kelly argues, lies in legacy management: families suddenly responsible for vast collections and estates that will define cultural memory for decades to come. In this landscape, rigor and data-driven insight have become the hallmarks of serious advising, while collaboration across financial, legal and art world disciplines defines the market’s next phase. Her approach, as always, is pragmatic yet deeply informed by respect for art itself: think strategically, plan for the long term and treat stewardship as a form of authorship.

Read the full interview with the Observer here.