Most art is bought on the primary market, from a studio or a gallery, and most of it stays there. A work may be admired, exhibited and sold once, and never be resold at a price that tells anyone what it is worth. The secondary market is where that test happens. It is also where, in the view of the advisers Catherine Freeman and Bigna Pfenninger, the decisions of collectors carry most weight.

Speaking on Wealth Office X, Pfenninger defined the secondary market simply. It covers every work that has had an owner before, whether that ownership began two years ago or several centuries ago. She was careful to dispel one assumption. An artist need not be dead for a secondary market to exist, and a living artist should be working to develop one.

Where visibility ends

Michael Macfarlane framed the distinction as one between visibility and legitimacy. The primary market makes noise and draws attention. The secondary market decides whether that attention was justified. Freeman's answer placed collectors at the centre of the process. A work chosen deliberately, lent to a museum, held in a known collection and eventually sold as part of it carries more cachet than one bought at random and left without context. The collection becomes a kind of argument, and each work in it borrows strength from the others.

This is why Freeman resists describing art purchases in purely financial or even social terms.

It's not only a social investment when you're investing in art, it's more of a civilizational investment.

— Catherine Freeman, Wealth Office

In her account, a collector who builds a coherent collection is making a public statement about where a culture should place its value. That statement has consequences for the market, because institutions, other collectors and auction houses read it.

The older model of patronage

Macfarlane raised the example of Charles Saatchi, whose concentrated buying of young British artists amplified their media visibility and institutional momentum, and created significant value for his own collection. He asked whether collectors might increasingly act as patrons in this older sense, underwriting artists over long periods and building networks of other collectors around them.

Pfenninger's answer was pragmatic. Patronage, she suggested, works best where the patron already stands. A collector needs to meet artists, dealers and the wider infrastructure, and that knowledge is local. It would have made little sense, she observed, for Saatchi to begin with South Korean art. Money alone is insufficient. She cited Singapore as a city with all the transactional modalities for a fine secondary market, which is still building the appetite and habits, such as studio visits, that make one work.

Asked what sophisticated patronage looks like, she spoke of leeway. A patron should give an artist freedom and resist being too prescriptive about the outcome, and needs a thorough understanding of the institutional landscape to support the right institutions. She also doubted that anyone can now play a lone game unless they start with the scale of a large conglomerate.

Freeman saw the younger generation adding new forms. Joint patronage, shared travel to visit artists and the use of social media to bring a circle of friends behind an artist could, she suggested, give that artist a considerable boost. Collecting then becomes a comprehensive support system.

Collections that are larger than their parts

Both guests drew a line between sophisticated and superficial collections, and neither drew it at price. Pfenninger described the sophisticated collector as one who wants the collection to be accessible, who lends and rotates works, and who lets the collection grow and change as their interests shift over a lifetime.

But the sophisticated collections in my eyes are the ones where the sum total is larger than its parts.

— Bigna Pfenninger, Wealth Office

Freeman added a structural point. A few blue-chip works with trackable market histories give a collection steadiness, which she likened to gold bars in a safe. That stability allows a collector to be more playful with contemporary or lesser-known artists, and perhaps to help those artists acquire the pedigree that the blue-chip names already have.

The implication is that legitimacy is partly lent. A lesser-known artist placed alongside established names, in a collection with a clear point of view that is shown in public, enters the market with a reputation already attached.

Custodians as well as owners

Macfarlane pushed the discussion toward purpose. Collectors, he suggested, may be custodians of something larger than themselves. Pfenninger agreed strongly. She compared art's value to that of a banknote or a gold bar, which depends on shared belief, and described art as a great deal of human thought captured and, with care, maintained. The choices about what to keep and preserve are deep ones.

She was equally frank that collecting itself is optional. She called art a necessity for humanity, yet said she does not think collecting is one. A principal can do other things with their money. What the conversation suggests is that those who do collect take on a role in the market's judgement of artists, whether they intend to or not. The open question is whether they play it deliberately.