Today we’d like to introduce you to Matthew Blong
Hi Matthew, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
Growing up, I never expected to become an independent art advisor and founder of a company like Charting Transcendence. In fact, I had been resisting the idea of becoming an entrepreneur for years.
My father, raised on a depression-era farm in Iowa, worked entrepreneurially for 40 years in real estate sales sold on commission, and I, growing up, had more opportunities than he had to pursue academic interests and travel opportunities. For that grounding I am grateful and recognizant.
Although I never learned to paint, draw, or sculpt, I had a knack for languages, so I pursued a degree in linguistics from Yale, where I also trained as a photographer in fine arts and photojournalism. Yet how I ended up applying my broad interests in the world after graduation ended up taking a quite different turn for the next decade and a half.
With my linguistic training and a passion for overseas travel, I joined the State Department as a foreign service officer in my early twenties, serving at U.S. embassies in Africa and Eastern Europe for several years before leaving to pursue my MBA in global business in Arizona.
Subsequently I spent five years in Russia and Europe working for several multinational corporations. By then deep immersion in social or cultural milieux had become second nature to me as I documented my explorations and travels as a collector of images (often shot on a simple iPhone, though I used to carry heavier equipment around). Thus I became a connoisseur of transcendent places and experiences that I looked forward to sharing with friends at home.
By my mid to late thirties, it gradually became clear to me that I had a unique perspective to bear on the visual arts: the stories behind artists, culture, and the planet’s wealth of artistic creation.
Case in point of how I nurtured my passion: for as long as I can remember, one of my all-time favorite activities has been going to museums. I’ll go to a museum of any size or topic. I once even went to a museum of flatirons, a spectacularly quirky collection, in an old wooden cottage in a Russian village.
Encountering art is simply unavoidable if you like museums as much as I do. This compulsion helped me catch on quickly to the context that makes art interesting and important, as I did over multiple iterations of mastering elements of different countries and cultures.
Stories, in the form of history or allegory, are critically important because art is virtually never made in a vacuum. People create things in relation to everything else around them, seen and unseen. Rarely does one encounter art that lacks grounding in something related but not obviously present in the work itself.
Around seven years ago, after leaving behind those two careers in international affairs and business, I spent two years living and studying art in New York City, where I earned my master’s degree in contemporary art.
Nevertheless, I hesitated to take the next step with an art career, and it took a few more years or trying and failing to fit into roles with various companies before I truly understood that art advisory work is what I was meant to do all along and that the entrepreneurial path was the best way to do it.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
It has certainly been a challenge to build the structure for an independent advisory, especially for someone accustomed to the stability of larger companies and organizations.
For sure I’ve made consistent progress since founding the business in the spring of 2023. Yet what things might look like for me 3-6 months ahead often seems nebulous, as if I can’t quite see ten feet in front of me to know what the future holds.
Although I feel confident in Charting Transcendence’s footing now, some initial steps took longer than expected. For example: building trust with clients takes a great deal of time and patience. Imagine the intimacy needed for a wealthy client to allow you into every room in their home so that you can view their collection, assess their style and decor, the books are on their shelf, their spouse’s preferences, their children’s interests, life experiences, etc. All of these things are relevant on some level in order for an advisor to recommend artworks that will truly enhance a client’s life.
Trusting my own instincts tends to guide me towards the next steps in building out my advisory practice.
Previous positions in relationship development and sales prepared me to envision long-term plans for strategic growth. While working in a completely different industry in Russia in the mid-2010s, I frequently flew across multiple time zones to spend time with clients and inspect various installations and conditions on the ground.
So traveling to see art and take people to fairs and museums everywhere from Boston to Atlanta to Chicago to Dallas to Los Angeles and San Francisco before flying home to Miami has, over the course of 2023 to 2024, become routine, and so the strategic approach of working nationally is starting to pay dividends, because people in my network are increasingly excited to see art with me and heed my recommendations as to what they should buy.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Charting Transcendence?
Charting Transcendence is an art advisory firm that primarily works with collectors to help them identify great art that speaks deeply to their passions, thereby providing a map or psychocartography of their journey through life.
Not only am I an expert in the contemporary art market, partly because I’ve studied contemporary art at a graduate level and have been going to hundreds upon hundreds of museum and gallery exhibitions each year for a decade now – I am also an educator who maintains a rich, deep, internal archive of art, stories and experiences that my brain practically swims in.
Clients work with me when they wish to have an advantage over shopping for art by themselves. They also choose to engage me for tours of art exhibitions (whether in galleries or public institutions) to learn about art that they would otherwise not even know existed.
I’m particularly proud of the brand name I developed – Charting Transcendence – as it is literally the name of my superpower. It’s how I operate in the world. Through culture, art, and stories, I build internal maps and structures towards feelings of awe and amazement, consciously leading people to experience things beyond everyday existence.
This is what experiencing and living with incredible art should do for those open to appreciating it.
Before we let you go, we’ve got to ask if you have any advice for those who are just starting out?
Although starting my business earlier (as well as having had more of an insider’s perspective on the world of art advisory) would have been helpful in some ways, I’m fairly sure that I came around to founding Charting Transcendence when I was finally ready for it.
That being said, I definitely took the more difficult and lonelier path by not having taken the traditional career path upwards through a gallery or auction house, or working under a more established art advisor first.
At the same time, I’m proud to call myself an “insider” to the art world who retains the perspective of an outsider. This permits me to clearly see the systems – and the multi-billion dollar market that fuels them – that others have constructed.
For as much art as I see, my views and tastes are always evolving. Yet my conviction remains in knowing in the moment the difference between art that gives someone a transcendent experience and art that is “hot” because other people have created hype.
I can track both, but where other art advisors are going to direct you towards the hype, I will guide you consistently to art that matters to you.
Through Charting Transcendence I curate art experiences for people who want to learn more and surround themselves with art they love. I’m a lot better than others at finding and directing people towards it.
This is the way my brain works: I actually care about what is “good” art – “good” being defined as art that is going to give you a sense of transcendence when you live with it.
These are just one of a few things that differentiate Charting Transcendence from every other art advisory firm in operation today. So I would encourage those starting out to look for those differentiators and build their businesses around them.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.chartingtranscendence.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chartingtranscendence/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@ChartingTranscendence
Image Credits
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