UC
	UC alumnus Douglas Cramer poses in his dining room before "Blue," an abstract by Cincinnati's Jim Dine, one of Cramer’s closest friends and one of his favorite contemporary artists. photo/Philip Greenberg

My No. 1 tip: Don't. You should never buy art with an eye toward making money. The market is given to swings as wild as the stock market. I've bought artwork that was worth 10 percent of what I paid for it 10 years later. Then 10 years after that, it was worth 300 times what I paid.

Be brutally fair: Art should be looked at as something you want to live with. I have a lot of paintings I can't give away. Some still hang in my house even though people ask me why in the world I have held on to them. I still enjoy them.

Do a lot of work: If you are foolish enough to play the art market to make money, you've got to study what's gone on with the artist's work for past 50 years. Before making a commitment, be sure to see the artist's other works from different periods.

Buy a drawing first: I almost never buy a painting or a sculpture without first buying a drawing. You should get used to living with it.

Know the artist: Get to know the dealers; then the artists, if they are alive; and if possible, go to their studios. Most "hot" artists' shows are sold out before they open because people bought art in their studios. I recently bought a wonderful new artist's painting from a sketch he'd done. He hadn't even completed the painting, but I hadn't been able to buy any of his work for three years, and I engaged in a heated battle with four other collectors to get this one.

When artists know you, that makes an enormous difference. It's not by chance that my closest personal friends have included Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns, Ed Ruscha, Ellsworth Kelly and Jim Dine (who studied art at UC in the late '50s).

It's not easy: Regardless of the skill, dedication, energy and money you invest, you can still make mistakes. But with art, at least you get to live with it.

Co-producer of Broadway's "Tale of the Allergist's Wife," Cramer is a New York Museum of Modern Art trustee, a founder and former president of the L.A. Museum of Contemporary Art, a philanthropist who gave the Cincinnati Art Museum $6 million worth of art and a Hollywood producer who spent 30 years creating and developing 90 TV movies, the first miniseries ("QB VII") and series such as "The Love Boat" and "Mission Impossible."

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