The Saatchi Gallery's Stuart: social networking art gallery

[regic]

Saatchi's  Stuart website: http://ecommercetimes.com/story/K8HEdxcy...lery.xhtml

Julie Ann Travis, 23, a graduate student at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco, is curious to see what her peers are up to and to share some of her latest work. So recently she posted a self-portrait in which her head is buried in a pile of dirt at Stuart, the latest addition to a recently redesigned Web site for the Saatchi Gallery in London.

The brainchild of the London-based advertising magnate and collector Charles Saatchi, this social networking outlet -- a kind of MySpace knockoff for artists -- is causing something of a sensation, boosting traffic at the gallery's Web site overall to more than 3 million hits a day...

Since Stuart (shorthand for "student art") went online last month, some 1,300 students have created Web pages there. No one vets the quality or style of the art. With dealers and collectors scouring student shows for undiscovered talent and students hunting for dealers to represent them, Stuart has tapped a vein that can't stop gushing...

full article: http://ecommercetimes.com/story/K8HEdxcy...lery.xhtml