Art Basel and the United Bank of Switzerland (UBS) published a 2023 Art Market overview by Clare McAndrew, an ‘Art Economist.’ The report is the only current overview of art trade sales that combines auctions and estimates from private dealers. Dealer estimates are provided based on survey responses from 1.3K businesses out of roughly 300K businesses in the market - survey numbers are not verified. After publishing the report, Clare McAndrew was quoted with this main takeaway, “The high end has rocketed away. It has squeezed the bottom end.”
This is a direct quote from the report provided below - “The high end of the market continued to be the driver of growth in 2022. Sales in the public auction sector dipped slightly by 1% to $26.8 billion, with works priced at over $10 million being the only segment to increase in value. The dealer sector grew by 7% to $37.2 billion, and sales for those operating at the higher end were significantly better than their peers in the lowest tiers.”
Wholistically, Auctions are down slightly, while dealers are seeing growth, despite record-breaking auction sales during 2022. Sales at art fairs are going down while the move to online buying picks up traction amongst collectors. This shift to online buying can mainly be explained as a lingering effect of the pandemic, where online buying assisted in keeping dealers above water. Smaller dealers (younger dealers) already had an online infrastructure for collectors to buy artwork, generating high competition between established and smaller dealers online during the pandemic. This high level of competition persists into 2023.
Additional topics in the report – the futures of NFTs, the growth in billionaire wealth and how that plays into the art market’s growth/ what that market is collecting, and how current political unrest has impacted overall growth.
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