I Smell a Trend...

First the Times, then a few days later the Wall Street Journal keys in on the graduate school farm teams.

So much for spending years toiling in obscurity -- or even starving -- to catch the fancy of the art world. With global auction sales hitting $4.2 billion last year and scores of new galleries fighting for inventory, some dealers are reaching out to a largely untapped group of American artists: the impossibly precocious.

Let's be honest, this is a rare situation. Most artists - most art students - will never have to deal with the soul crushing dilemma of turning down easy hedge fund money in favor of greater personal development and perhaps long-term artistic success. Plus, this whole higher ed arts thing seems to be a recent development that hasn't entirely proven its legs. There's a lot of proto-Schaedenfreud in these articles, people rubbing their hands just hoping for the bottom to fall out.