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A woman takes time out to observe a Picasso hanging on the wall of a museum in Valencia, Spain. She probably doesn't know that the painting is now property of Bancaixa, a bank. In the United States, wholesaler Costco is into art. It sold a Picasso on its web site for just under US$40,000. Money and art go hand in hand. A study by New York University's Stern School of Business estimates that the average appreciation of art from 1875 to 2000 rose somewhere between U.S. inflation rates and the S&P 500 stock index. It's a stable investment, good for the risk-adverse.