Affordable Art for the Home From $15–$5000

White Columns, the oldest alternative art space in New York, has been in the vanguard of cutting-edge exhibition venues since it was founded in 1970. In the decades since, it has showcased some of the biggest names in art when they were just starting out, adding self-taught and long-neglected artists to the mix in recent years. Each year they publish an editioned portfolio of silkscreen prints by the latest up-and-comers; priced around $1,500, they sell out quickly. For thinner wallets, there are limited-edition multiples by artists such as former Sonic Youth star Kim Gordon for $200. Artist catalogs, signed and unsigned, start at $10, and these, too, are published in limited numbers.
https://whitecolumns.org/editions-publications/

Karma is one of the leading spaces of New York’s Lower East Side/East Village gallery scene, and it has several locations—including one in Los Angeles, as well as a dedicated bookstore. The latter is chock-full of cool art stuff like catalogs, posters, and ephemera such as a signed exhibition card for Joseph Beuys ($500) and the rare, out-of-print booklet for the legendary 1977 “Pictures” show at Artists Space, which launched the transformative Pictures Generation ($300). Also available are limited-edition prints by a range of artists including Dike Blair, Louise Lawler, and Nicolas Party (prices on request). You can browse at the bookstore’s IRL spot in New York City (136 E. 3rd Street) or visit its extensive website.
https://bookstore.karmakarma.org/

Looking for something 3D to spruce up your abode? Another venerable NYC alternative institution, Artists Space, offers several sculptural multiples to grace your space. You’ll find items such as Cosima von Bonin’s enamel-on-wood rocket ship ($5,000) and Trisha Braga’s circuit board–embedded ceramics ($3,000). If you want something more functional, there’s a swooping steel-frame LED floor lamp by Joan Jonas ($5,000). Photographs (by Justine Kurland, among others) are also available, along with other sorts of editions that include Kate Shepherd’s cut-paper collage of a bedroom interior ($1,000). Want etchings that you could invite someone over to look at? You’ll find examples by artists such as Hernan Bas ($2,500), Robert Mangold (2,500), and Carroll Dunham ($1,200).
https://artistsspace.org/store/editions

Back when Soho belonged to artists, a group of them banded together to open Printed Matter, a nonprofit purveyor of periodicals, catalogs, critical writings, and other texts devoted to contemporary art. The bookstore became a fixture of the New York neighborhood, and though it eventually decamped to Chelsea, it has continued its mission for nearly 50 years. In addition to selling (often rare) art publications and assorted merch (T-shirts, tote bags), Printed Matter hosts exhibitions and other public events, underwriting it efforts with sales of affordable works. Ranging from $30 to $3,500, these limited editions include silkscreen and archival pigment prints, lithographs, and 3D multiples by a host of talents that include Arthur Jafa, Louise Lawler, Kerstin Brätsch, and Elizabeth Peyton, among others.
https://www.printedmatter.org/catalog/category/15-pm-fundraising-editions

When it comes to contemporary art, Gagosian is the global bigfoot of galleries, with a jaw-dropping 18 locations—six in New York alone, and others across America, Europe, and Asia. There are also two Gagosian shops, one in NYC and the other in London, offering a wide variety of merchandise that includes items falling into the affordable art category. Exhibition posters in particular are a great way to class up your home, and Gagosian offers handsomely designed examples on quality paper from $15 to $60. Limited-edition prints and multiples will run you well north of there (upwards of $50,000), but there are also offerings priced in the $500 to $5,000 range by big-name artists such as Takashi Murakami, Ed Ruscha, and Georg Baselitz.
https://gagosianshop.com/

Offering one-stop shopping for all things artist designed, modern, and cutting edge—from furniture and home electronics to kitchen utensils and pet accessories—the Museum of Modern Art Design Store in New York is also a great place to find art for the budget conscious. Admittedly, some of the items straddle the fine line between objéts and merch—neon signs by Andy Warhol and Keith Haring, skateboard decks by Murakami and Robert Indiana—but they’re all fully authorized and will eventually become collectibles. Rare exhibition posters already fit that category, and MoMA offers colorful announcements in the $500 to $2,000 range for historical shows by seminal names such as Picasso, Matisse, and Jasper Johns. Best of all, they come already framed.
https://store.moma.org/collections/rare-posters?gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQiApOyqBhDlARIsAGfnyMpZ45lGufvepfkMqd8rqvK0sq1MOEFETvu1xHABhRK_25WSKZizYXMaAjdrEALw_wcB#?page=1

Like most museum shops, including MoMA’s, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) Store sells a wide variety of books, postcards, and artist-stamped merchandise (mugs, T-shirts). But it also offers limited-edition prints and multiples, many of them by artists who are from, or based on, the West Coast. Most of the prints and multiples are well under $5,000, with quite a few running in the three-figure range. Among the best bargains are an exuberant etching by Bay Area funkmeister William T. Wiley ($610) done in his signature surrealoid-cartoonish style, and a retro-Pop pairing of John Wayne and an astronaut by Los Angeles printmaker Dave Lefner, who specializes in reduction linocuts ($300).
https://www.thelacmastore.org/collections/limited-editions-and-multiples
https://www.thelacmastore.org

For the past 50 years, this Oakland, California–based nonprofit has been supporting artists with developmental disabilities, providing studio space and gallery representation to a wide array of astounding talents. Many of them have been embraced by the art world, with works entering the collections of such major institutions as MoMA, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian, the Studio Museum of Harlem, Collection de L’Art Brut, and the American Folk Art Museum. Given their appeal, it’s amazing just how affordable these pieces can be, with vividly original sculptures, paintings, and drawings starting at just $50. These surefire conversation starters will enliven any interior. Inquiries can be made at gallery@creativegrowth.org.
https://creativegrowth.org/

Back in 1965, the venerable literary quarterly commissioned a series of prints by major contemporary artists as a way to help fund the magazine; initial contributors included Helen Frankenthaler, Ellsworth Kelly, Robert Motherwell, and Andy Warhol. In 2022 the program was revived, with a different slate of big names (Alex Katz, Ed Ruscha, John Currin, and Louise Nevelson among them) providing silkscreens, etchings, and lithographs with prices starting at $500. Each print contains a variation on the Paris Review brand in the composition.
https://store.theparisreview.org/collections/print-series
https://store.theparisreview.org

Since 2006 Primary Information has been a nonprofit publisher of artists’ books and artists’ writings, including reprints of rare, discontinued texts. To raise funds to support its operations, the organization has collaborated with a number of artists over the years to produce a series of limited-edition prints priced between $50 and $5,000, making them a great choice for anyone looking to score a piece of affordable art. You’ll find offerings by Mary Kelly, William Wegman, Dara Birnbaum, Walter Robinson, and many more.
https://primaryinformation.org/limited-editions

If your taste runs toward work with a conceptual edge, check out the artist editions from the German art-critical journal Texte zur Kunst. Since the Berlin-based magazine began in 1990 in Cologne, it has been supporting its operations by selling prints and multiples by contemporary artists of note. Each issue of Texte zur Kunst brings with it another edition produced exclusively for the publication. Besides being cool, these objects are surprisingly affordable, given the well-known artists attached to them (such as Rachel Harrison, Rosemarie Trockel, and Ed Ruscha, to cite just a few). Texte zur Kunst’s latest offering, a clear plastic pillow filled with shredded pages of the magazine (€1,500, or about $1,630), comes courtesy of Josh Kline, whose piquant commentaries on global capitalism were recently surveyed at the Whitney in New York.
https://www.textezurkunst.de/en/artist-editions/

Launched in 2011, Artspace was one of the first e-commerce platforms devoted to selling contemporary art online—a game-changer for an art market that had previously relied on in-person transactions. Artspace currently serves as an outlet for editions produced by numerous galleries and museums, but it also offers in-house exclusives, many of which fall into the $150 to $3,000 price range. Among these are photographs, silkscreens, and archival pigment prints by such art market faves as Dana Schutz, Camille Henrot, Nick Cave, Marcel Dzama, and Eric Fischl, among others. Framing is available, as are monthly payment plans.
https://www.artspace.com/tags/artspace-editions

The chances of finding an original work of art are pretty slim for anyone limited to a budget of $100 and under, but it doesn’t mean that their walls have to go bare. There are any number of quality reproductions out there, and 20 x 200 is a good place to find them. Among the offerings are several examples of paintings by Hilma af Klint, the Swedish spiritualist and proto-abstractionist who was virtually unknown until a 2019 retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Works by photography masters are also available, with landscapes by Ansel Adams, cityscapes by Berenice Abbott, and locomotion studies by Eadweard Muybridge. More-contemporary fare can be found in William Wegman’s whimsical collaborations with his Weimaraner muses.
https://20×200.com/

Artsy is a major digital platform for online auctions, exhibition news, and artworks for sale, with the latter featuring ample stocks of affordable art including limited editions and unique works, many of which fall well under $5,000. Among the former, you’ll find prints and multiples by a wide array of familiar names such as Cindy Sherman, Yayoi Kusama, Shepard Fairey, Takashi Murakami, KAWS, Maurizio Cattelan, and more. As for the latter, Artsy makes it easy to find something to fit your budget with categories (including original paintings) broken down by price. These are admittedly by lesser-known artists on their way up, but grab them while you can, because some day, that canvas you nabbed for $500 could be worth $10,000.
https://www.artsy.net/

Avant Arte styles itself as “a curated marketplace that aims to make discovering and collecting art radically more accessible for a new generation.” To that end, it offers limited editions—sculptures, works on paper, NFTs, and hand-printed silkscreens—created in collaboration with both emerging and well-established names. Past participating artists have included internationally renowned figures such as Elizabeth Peyton, Anish Kapoor, and Ai Weiwei. While some of these projects have been limited-time offers, there are also plenty of buy-now options by veterans (a winter scene by Deborah Brown for $667) and younger artists (a cubist-inspired vision of femininity by Nigerian painter Deborah Segun, also for $667).
https://avantarte.com/

ArtWise is a Brooklyn-based purveyor of modern and contemporary art prints that started out 30 years ago with a small selection of museum and exhibition posters and has since expanded its inventory to include limited-edition and unique artworks. Offerings from hundreds of artists are available, including a wide array of artist posters for under $100. If you don’t mind spending more, there are vintage posters, some of which are signed by the artist. (Signed lithographs from better-known artists—Robert Longo, Kerry James Marshall, Chuck Close—are also for sale, though these go for well over our $5,000.) Prices include framing in some cases. You can buy online or drop in on their location in Brooklyn.
https://www.artwiseonline.com/