I’ve been following and collecting street art for a long time – it started with pure fascination, and over the years I’ve been lucky to come across works by people like Dondi, Seen, Futura, Banksy and others.

Lately I’ve been thinking about something that’s not so easy to talk about:

A lot of the early works – sketches, tags, small-format pieces – only survived because someone saw them as valuable. Valuable enough to preserve, store, archive.

And I get it – street art was never meant to be behind glass. It started as resistance, as something temporary. But then again: if these works hadn’t gained value, would they still exist at all?

So here’s my question, and I’m asking it as openly as I can:

👉🏽 Is market value the only real guarantee that street art gets preserved?

I know this is a bit of a loaded topic. Some people hate that graffiti gets commodified. Others see collecting as a way of honoring it.

I’m not trying to argue one way or the other. Just sharing a thought that’s been bugging me.

—Andrew Jovic ✌🏻 (Longtime follower of the scene, occasional collector, always curious.)