Theme Magazine’s “The Collectors” issue (guest curated by Marc + Sara Schiller of Wooster Collective), takes a close look at the motivations of art collectors, and interviewed Jen about the gallery and 20x200, and her philosophy for collecting.

Writer Jiae Kim for Theme asks,

And what are some of the mistakes that young collectors make?

Jen Bekman: You have to value experience and you have to be able to say, what are the things around me that I’ve spent this amount of money on, and is it going to be worth it? People buy expensive things all the time. They buy shoes, handbags, cars, computers, very expensive TVs, so we all have considered big purchases. Set a budget for yourself and say I’m going to buy three significant pieces this year and I’m not going to spend more than $1,000 on each one of them but I’m going to do it.

Jen also recommends buying art because you want to live with it, rather than buying art based on the future dollar value of the purchase. She points to a few avenues for finding good art (aside from the 20x200 newsletter, of course!) such as swissmiss, Paulson Press, and Crown Point Press.

Read the full interview with Jen here [PDF download]!