1. Introduction: Recovering the Divide

Before I became an art historian and collector, I viewed art as a luxury preserved for those who have leisure beyond the necessities of survival. Visual Art was not presented to me as a discipline until I began my doctorate at Columbia University in Education, where I studied the foundations of learning and best practice. Project-based learning seemed to be at the core of every philosophers’ positioning, whereas any system could be used to teach any and all things. It was then that I discovered I could use my museum enjoyment as a unit to then teach science, math, language, history, reading, and writing. Upon further research, I realized I wasn’t combining two disciplines; I was recovering ancient philosophies which depended on art for recording history, designing architecture, building machinery, drafting anatomies for medicine, and teaching critical thinking through figuration. Before we had access to brain scans, photography, X-rays, the internet, and generative AI, the main tool to connect these concepts to human ability was art. Even political movements still persuade communities with the same visual language we’ve used for centuries. By this time, my curiosity grew beyond the courses offered in Curriculum & Teaching, which pushed me to expand to Interdisciplinary Education and Art History to follow this question: Where did the divide begin, and how can we recover the gap in art literacy? 

This question continued to follow me beyond the classroom. As a certified teacher in the largest school districts in America, Los Angeles and New York, I saw that literacy disparities stemmed from a lack of access and limited experiences, which prevented students from connecting the dots across disciplines and making personal connections to the curriculum. For example, teaching farm animals to students who have never left their borough in New York City as part of their first 200 words seems like a disconnect. However, many studies showed that art served as a vehicle for experience, allowing students to conceptualize an experience outside their own in a personal way and better connect to the material. In Art as Experience (1934), philosopher John Dewey wrote: "Art is the living and concrete proof that man is capable of restoring consciously, and thus on the plane of meaning, the union of sense, need, impulse and action characteristic of the live creature." With this knowledge, I questioned again why we have separated art as a key aspect of literacy. 

II. The Recurring Gap

The answer was less philosophical and more administrative. We began cutting arts programs to “focus” on core competencies. The initiative began in the early 1990s with international competition where specifically we compared fifteen-year-olds abroad in science and math (Catterall, 2017). These disparities in comparison led to shifts in funding. A further blow to arts funding followed the No Child Left Behind Act, which pulled funding from art in schools whose students were underperforming in standardized testing of math and reading. Dee and Jacob (2010) found that most of those cuts came from "social studies, art, music, gym, recess, or lunch," with the largest reallocations occurring in urban and high-poverty districts (Center on Education Policy, 2006, as cited in Dee & Jacob, 2010). A related federal study found that while most elementary teachers reported no change in arts instruction overall, a disproportionate share of teachers in schools already flagged as low-performing under NCLB reported losing art instruction specifically (U.S. Government Accountability Office, 2009, as cited in Dee & Jacob, 2010). These shifts fell hardest on those who were unable to absorb the loss. As art became optional, it became less and less associated with need.  I observed firsthand how these cuts affected students in Los Angeles and New York, and I wondered if the same gaps followed these groups into adulthood. I wondered if the thirty-five-year-old New Yorker who feels lost in a museum was the same eight-year-old who was never taught how to make abstract critical connections across art disciplines because their funding was cut, and if that same eight-year-old also never left their borough. Both the child and adult are missing an opportunity to think critically about art. What resources these students had came from educators who understood the connections instinctively and built arts enrichment into their lessons anyway, but what about the modern-day adult? Where can adults go to learn about art outside of the four walls and hundreds of thousands of dollars of collegiate education?

This is the exact gap that inspired the inception of the Collector’s Cödex. Not to close the gap in what art is able to do because that is well studied, but to express this connection to those who have never been shown how. 

III. What is the Collector’s Cödex? 

Every feature in the platform maps to a principle that I first tested in the classroom. The mark of a great educator is understanding that no two brains are exactly the same. How we file information and how each of us learns is very individualized. As students grow, their main skill is learning how to adapt instruction to their own brain. Having taught from early childhood to graduate level, I consider multiple avenues of literacy as an even field and provide opportunities for each type of learner to benefit from their strengths. Essentially, the product is a tool to learn art through the philosophies of an expert in teaching as opposed to technology, which makes it unique. The intention in the programming is to improve the confidence of the user and build success through usage. The Lens functions as a diagnostic pre-assessment. Rather than asking the user to describe their taste using vocabulary they were never taught how to name (e.g., being a fan of impressionism or chiaroscuro), it observes preference directly and draws conclusions from the provided choices to design from. These are the same methods a teacher would use to assess prior knowledge before planning a unit. The events feed is scaffolded exposure, suggesting events from where the user is starting rather than a static feed that is built for no one in particular. The events page also slowly learns from the user’s lens so that the novice art lover is not bombarded with the same intensity as an established art connoisseur. The Practicum exists because literacy is not built from a single exposure. Literacy requires repetition and the ability to make text-to-text, text-to-self, and text-to-world connections. 

The educational lens is at the core of my framework. Naturally, my opinions on improving access in the art world begin with education. Collector’s Cödex thrives on three pillars of discovery: where to go, what you like, and why you’re looking at it. The first iteration of the Collector’s Cödex was a static PDF with predictions on what would shape the consumer's art fair experience during Art Basel Miami. Knowing many people ask me for advice on navigating multiple fairs, traffic, entry costs, and which to prioritize, I began ranking fair experiences based on collectors' interests and preemptively built a guide. After creating the static document, I knew it needed to be algorithmic and informed by the individual in addition to my suggestion. I began brushing up on several AI languages I used in the past to add widgets to Myspace and began coding using Python, JavaScript, and AI coding assistants to debug what was beyond my software engineering expertise. The product resulted in an interface for creating a profile, learning the language to describe your taste, continuing to build art historical literacy, and, most importantly, knowing where to go.

IV. Vision

The measure of success for Collector’s Cödex is not a measurement of quantity of users. As any great educator or philosopher would report, the goal is measurable change. The event matches reflect that. The Lens calibration shows us whether or not the user is able to engage long enough to be understood. It's moving beyond getting one museum or gallery visit out of the user but creating a routine of attending. It’s the individual case studies and reports from collectors and art enthusiasts who tried something new because they felt more confident based on learning derived from my app. It’s the encouragement to explore a new experience found in the events screen that the user may have never tried had they not used Collector’s Cödex. It’s a redirection back toward human craft and human interaction, with AI in service of that, not in place of it. Many apps can track activity, but this app was meant to track learning.

That distinction was solidified for me at Christie’s Art + Tech Summit earlier this July. Technologists returned to the same thesis: generative AI is a tool for the creative rather than being its own creative force. Art collecting is still an understudied wealth-building market, with more millennials purchasing art now more than ever. Christie’s CEO Bonnie Brennan reported $1 billion in private sales just in the first 6 months of 2026. Many speakers brought up the need for human experiences and connection as we continue building in tech; the need for these will continue to increase. The summit solidified that my thinking, before having the language, was in line with the leading voices in art and technology. The algorithm can surface the right exhibition, calibrate the right pace of learning, and organize a member's taste into something legible. It cannot stand in a gallery and make an emotional connection to an art piece. That judgment stays human by design, not by limitation.

The divide I kept finding was never in what art could do but who was shown that it could. Collector’s Cödex is my attempt to bridge that gap in access, not by lowering expectations, but by providing more avenues to access information and experience. 

References

Catterall, L. G. (2017). A brief history of STEM and STEAM from an inadvertent insider. The STEAM Journal, 3(1), Article 5.https://doi.org/10.5642/steam.20170301.05

Dee, T. S., & Jacob, B. A. (2010). The impact of No Child Left Behind on students, teachers, and schools. Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Fall 2010, 149–207.

Dewey, J. (1934). Art as experience. Minton, Balch & Company.