This compass even includes science, because it is through the values of their own culture, largely imparted through the arts, that individual scientists conceive their own purposes, and choose what fields of physical phenomena to investigate for the advancement of mankind. For anyone to identify and evaluate adequately the most important new divelopments and achievements, in the fine arts of one's own time, is the greatest mental challenge there is, for those who care to undertake it fully. It also requires the expenditure of a great deal of time in learning, contemplation, analysis, and comparison - time that few people in the busy contemporary world have, if they themselves are not actually employed in teaching or creating in the fine arts. Connoisseurship, a concept almost forgotten nowadays, is extremely difficult for an individual to acquire, and it cannot be done without the will, talent, perserverance, and time to develop such impressive ability of artistic judgment. They are in a sense at the mercy of the artistic opinions of others, mostly art dealers.
Art dealers are busy trying to become wealthy also.
In no field of commerce can the warning caveat emptor be more pertinent than in the buying and collecting of contemporary art. A serious collector's only real self-defense in this marketplace is to study the great art of the past in a serious way, and to do so for years on end. There is no other way to develop an informed taste and artistic sensibility. There is no effective short cut, no cheap crash course to enroll in. Moreover, the problem does not end there.