About
Who Writes These Guides
GidArt is a small independent desk that writes for one reader: the person about to buy a piece of art for the first time. Three of us work on it. We publish instructions, not opinions about taste: what to do, in what order, and what to ask before the money moves.
Who We Are
Three people, no newsroom. Elena writes the buying guides and answers most of the reader mail. Marcus reads the paperwork (invoices, certificates, ownership histories) and knows which line usually turns out to be wrong. Daria checks every number and every claim before a guide is published. We are not a gallery, we do not sell art, and we do not take a cut of anything you buy.
What We Publish
Step-by-step guides and short answers: how to make a first purchase, how to tell whether a price is fair, where it is safe to buy, how to check provenance and authenticity. The guides assume a budget between $500 and $10,000, and no prior experience at all. Every one of them comes from a question a reader actually sent us. All of them live in the guide catalogue.
Start with Art collecting on a budget: what money buys at each level, Ask a curator: how a private consultation works and Buying art online safely.
Why You Can Trust This
Nothing here is rewritten from someone else's article. When a guide tells you to request a document, one of us has requested that document and knows what a real one looks like. When it gives you a number, Daria has traced where the number came from. Where we don't know something, the guide says so instead of guessing. When we get something wrong, we fix the page and put the new review date on it.
How This Site Pays for Itself
Some links are affiliate or partner links, labelled [affiliate] right where they appear. If you buy through one, we get a small commission and you pay the same price. A commission has never put a platform into a guide, and nobody pays to be recommended here. The full rules are in our editorial standards.
Who Does What
Elena Duarte
Editor, buying guides
Writes the step-by-step guides and answers most of the reader mail, including the awkward questions about a specific piece someone is about to buy. Twelve years around galleries taught her which promises are worth writing down.
Marcus Feldt
Provenance and paperwork
Reads the documents so you know what to ask for: invoices, certificates, condition reports, ownership histories. Eight years of tracing where a work has been, and of finding the year that doesn't add up.
Daria Kubiak
Fact-checking and pricing research
Checks every claim and every number before a guide goes live, and sends the ones that don't hold up back for a rewrite. Catalogued private collections in Riga and Berlin, which is where the allergy to unverified attributions started.