By admin1
In luxury real estate, the art on the walls serves a double purpose as both decoration and investment vehicle. As more wealthy buyers treat art as both a lifestyle purchase and an asset class, some brokerages and agents are looking more closely at how fine art can shape the experience of a home — from staging and storytelling to long-term client relationships.
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Global sales of art at major auction houses Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips rose 11.1 percent in 2025 to $4.55 billion, while New York auction sales climbed 23 percent to $3.2 billion, according to a spring art market report from Merrill. The report also noted that $1 million-plus art spending has shifted beyond the Northeast toward the West, Southeast and Texas.
That overlap is the focus of The Agency Art House, an art advisory and staging division tied to Mauricio Umansky’s luxury brokerage, The Agency. Led by Arushi Kapoor, the division works with buyers and collectors while also staging luxury homes with original artwork sourced through galleries and artists.
Kapoor spoke with Inman ahead of her appearance at Luxury Connect about art as an asset class, the limits of traditional staging and why art can become another way for agents to stay close to high-net-worth clients.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Inman: For readers who may not be familiar, how would you describe The Agency Art House and how it fits into luxury real estate?
Kapoor: The Agency Art House is primarily an art advisory service. We also have an art staging division. We build asset-class collections for clients interested in buying artwork at all price points, including luxury real estate buyers. There is a natural synergy. A lot of people who buy luxury homes also invest in art, but art is an unregulated, opaque market with high barriers to entry and restricted access.
The advisory side helps clients build collections in a transparent, education-based way. The staging side works with galleries and artists to put original artwork into luxury properties. A lot of traditional staging uses generic artwork that does not really support the value of a luxury property. We try to create a more memorable walk-through experience.
Most real estate buyers are not art collectors. Some are, but many do not know where to go or how to step into a gallery. The staging side brings that world into the home. From almost every house we have staged, we have had sales of artworks — either the buyer or the buyer and seller have purchased the artwork with the house itself.
How does the advisory process work in practice?
Kapoor: An agent does not have to be with The Agency. An agent who is selling the house contacts us, and we usually tell them to make a warm, casual introduction to the client. Then we set up a discovery call. It is not high stakes or high pressure, and I am not showing them artworks on that call. The goal is to understand their needs, wants, long-term goals, short-term goals, fiscal goals and aesthetic goals.
Once I understand that, we set them up with an art advisor based on their needs, price points and other markers. I personally work with every art advisor and know what they are sending to clients, so it is very hands-on. From there, it becomes a long-term relationship about what goes where, what price points make sense and what artworks should go into the collection.
We are full-service. We organize installation, logistics, insurance for higher-level artworks and, if needed, connections to bankers or appraisers. We treat artwork like an asset class, just like real estate is. Mauricio always says art is like real estate on the wall.
Where are your clients based? Is this mostly a Los Angeles, New York or Miami business?
Kapoor: We work with people at all different price points and levels. We have clients in Atherton, Indian Creek Island, Los Angeles, Aspen, Texas, Alaska, New York, Miami and D.C. Our clients are based nationally. There are clients in Portland[, Oregon]. There are clients in Delaware. There are clients everywhere.
The question is more about where the artworks are being sourced from. I personally have access to exclusive art collections that no one has seen because they are in private houses. What we do is repurchase artworks from the older generation and bring them to the next generation.
Art has had high barriers to entry. A lot of people who made money in finance, hedge funds and tech do not have knowledge about how to collect. That knowledge was often passed down through ultra-high-net-worth families. We are opening that up and giving the same education and access to the next generation that has made money in the past three decades.
Why would someone work with an art advisor instead of going directly to an auction house?
Kapoor: Art advisors also work with auction houses, so we can negotiate better terms or help evaluate the right route. The art world is tiny. The vetted, strong art advisors are a very small group, and we all work with each other.
For every artwork you are selling or buying through an auction house, you need to evaluate the commission structure. Auction houses normally take commissions between 20 percent and 30 percent, plus miscellaneous fees.
With The Agency Art House, the commission structures are very transparent. We take a 10 percent commission, and the client knows where we are buying and selling the artworks from. Sometimes galleries pay our commission within the price. Sometimes galleries pay part of it, and the client covers the rest. But the structure is transparent.
We work like watchdogs for the client. We do not work for the galleries. Everyone in the art world has some interest in selling you artwork. What your art advisor should do is tell you “no” when something is not the right thing to do, and tell you “yes” when it is.
It is also not just a transactional deal. We help create a plan for how to preserve, keep, display and eventually sell the artwork. People change, and their collections change with them. If a client bought something five years ago and no longer loves it as much, they may want to sell it, realize a gain and reinvest in something that fits who they are now — just like they might with real estate or any other asset class.
Agents often say they are helping clients buy or sell the most expensive asset they own. In your world, that may not always be the case. Do you end up having the same kind of high-touch, almost therapist-adjacent relationship that agents have with clients?
Kapoor: Absolutely. But there is a distinction.
When an agent is selling a client a property, that client is not buying a property every day or every month. Even the richest individuals are not closing on a property every other day. With art advisors, one house has multiple walls. Beyond that, clients have kids, parents and other people in their lives. Our relationships become very close. We know a lot about clients from a taste perspective.
That can be helpful to agents. One client was introduced by an agent in Seattle and later bought multimillion-dollar artworks. Because we stayed close to the client, I knew when she was interested in buying in Santa Monica to be closer to her kids. I called the agent who introduced us, and she was able to find someone to work with the client in California.
We have more touch points and more information about taste preferences, wants and how clients are changing. With agents, because we are working with the same clients, it all works together.
What do you want agents to understand about the staging side of the business?
Kapoor: One big part of it is that all the artworks are for sale. As and when artworks sell from the house, we also take care of the agents who brought us into the deal. They get a little commission out of our commission percentage.
It is a good way to put great artwork in a house, while also creating a little bit of side income for agents. A lot of the time, especially in bigger markets, people buy the house with everything in it and make an offer on all the artwork.
For me, that is one of the big things I want to talk about at Luxury Connect — staging and expanding that staging model into different states.
