Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in On Balance, the ARTnews newsletter about the art market and beyond. Sign up here to receive it every Wednesday.

The spring auction season ended with a miss, as Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Phillips collectively fell short of even their most modest expectations. 

The houses had estimated $1.2 billion to $1.6 billion in sales for the week’s evening sales, but together brought in just over $1 billion, including buyer’s premiums, with each auction failing to reach its pre-sale estimate. The hammer total of $837.5 million was even more disappointing. The total was down from $1.4 billion during the same week last year and $1.8 billion in 2022. Weighing on the results were a drop in the value of highest-priced works and the fading presence of emerging artists who had dominated the market in recent years.

This month, the top ten artworks sold across the three houses brought in a combined $278.6 million with fees, led by Piet Mondrian’s 1922 painting Composition With Large Red Plane, Bluish Gray, Yellow, Black and Blue at $47.6 million. In May 2024, the top ten lots generated $312.4 million; in 2023, the figure was $403.3 million. The total for this year’s top ten lots is a dramatic 63 percent drop from 2022, when the equivalent works totalled $759.2 million.

Elsewhere during spring auction week, sales skewed more towards more established artists than in recent years. After a period of heavy emphasis on the “ultra-contemporary” category, interest in emerging and young artists has largely vanished. At Phillips—traditionally the most aggressive in that space—four of the 36 works featured in its evening sale were by artists under 45: Yu Nishimura, Ilana Savdie, Danielle Mckinney and Adam Pendleton. In the equivalent 2021 sale, there were eight. At Sotheby’s contemporary evening sale, just four artists under 45 were included, down from seven in May 2021. None of the under-45 artists who appeared in either house’s evening sales four years ago returned this season.

“There are a lot of artists that disappeared,” Elizabeth Fiore, a New York–based art adviser, told ARTnews.

To adviser Mary Hoeveler, also based in New York, the shaky performance this May appears to be a reflection of financial turmoil in other parts of the economy.

“There’s no doubt that a lack of urgency predominates now in terms of buying, especially with works that can be had in the future, like younger and mid-career artists,” Hoeveler told ARTnews. “That said, people are also reluctant to spend large sums, so there’s a sense of uncertainty that’s constraining people’s appetite to spend a lot on art.”

Mckinney was one of the few living artists to draw notable attention this season. Three of her works exceeded their high estimates last week, and since 2023, her auction prices have consistently increased, with her work hitting a new record of $340,000 in March. At Sotheby’s on Thursday, her 2023 painting Stand Still was among the most competitive lots, ultimately selling for seven times its $40,000 estimate with fees.

In March, Mckinney’s New York dealer Marianne Boesky told ARTnews that the artist has a long waiting list as institutional interest has increased. And, last week, New York art adviser Andrea Hazen told ARTnews that the Sotheby’s estimate was close to Mckinney’s primary market prices, indicating that bidding was likely to be fierce for the work.

But the pullback from “ultra-contemporary” appears to have created room for a different group to hit new highs: late-career women artists. At 93, Olga de Amaral set a new auction record when her 1996 metallic wall hanging Imagen Perdida 27 sold for just under $1.2 million at Phillips. The next day, 71-year-old Marlene Dumas reached $13.6 million—more than double her previous $6 million record from 2008. Both artists may have benefited from the rarity of their work in evening sales. Records were also set for several dead 20th-century women artists, including Dorothea Tanning, Remedios Varo, Grace Hartigan, and Kiki Kogelnik.

New York adviser Erica Samuels, who focuses on contemporary art, told ARTnews that the record for Amaral was an encouraging sign amid what she described as an undeniable slowdown in the market. “There’s no doubt things have been sluggish,” she said.

The shift may have contributed to some canonical postwar male artists landing in discount territory. Works by Frank Stella, Ellsworth Kelly, Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell, and Alberto Giacometti sold at or below their low estimates, or failed to sell altogether. Many of the works that sold well were guaranteed, meaning they weren’t exposed financially. Giacometti’s 1955 work Grande tête mince (Grande tête de Diego), estimated at $70 million, was unusually offered without a guarantee or irrevocable bit—reportedly to maximize the consignor’s potential profit—and paid the price quite literally. It failed to sell.

Fiore, whose advisory firm manages around 20 clients, said that some of her collectors are pausing on bigger private transactions in the $1 million to $2 million range. She also indicated that she saw many works offered at auction last week for “a lot less” than their asking price when the works were offered up for private sale. 

Phillips held one of its smallest evening sales in recent years, totaling $52 million—down 40 percent from the $86 million achieved in the equivalent May sale last year.

“There’s some resistance at the very high end with sellers,” Robert Manley, Phillips’s newly named chairman of modern and contemporary art, told ARTnews. Manley, who is based in New York, added that he feels the market is solid, given that most lots are still selling, and disputed that there is an actual downturn. 

“There’s definitely less speculation for younger artists, but it’s quite healthy,” he said. “People are less willing to spend these stratospheric prices.”

The demographic shift isn’t limited to artists. In recent years, the major auction houses have emphasized the role of Asian bidders, each investing heavily in the region and opening new Hong Kong headquarters. Since 2020, clients from Asia have typically accounted for about 30 percent of auction activity—but their presence was noticeably diminished this season.

In a LinkedIn post after the sales, former Christie’s CEO and current board member Guillaume Cerutti cited the drop as a key factor in the results: “The participation of Asian bidders was lower than usual,” he wrote. Phillips and Christie’s did not disclose the countries where collectors are based, as they have in the past. Sotheby’s, however, reported that US buyers led its single-owner sales, while just 10 percent of clients came from Asia.

In the past, wealth from Russia, Asia, and the Gulf have helped buoy demand. But now, according to Hoeveler, it’s unclear where that kind of buying power might come from. “Given the economic duress in the rest of the world, it’s not known where the new money is going to emerge,” she said.

Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in On Balance, the ARTnews newsletter about the art market and beyond. Sign up here to receive it every Wednesday.

As the art market has muddled through its years-long slump of late, the marquee auctions have become exercises in damage mitigation. Collectors seem content to remain on the sidelines while the auction houses hustle to coax them back into the game, whether as consignors or bidders.

That’s one major reason why Christie’s guaranteed all 39 lots in its inaugural sale of the season, “Leonard & Louise Riggio: Collected Works,” on Monday night. The strategy might not be sexy, but it worked: the sale brought in $272 million, against a low estimate of $252 million. The 20th century art sale that followed drew an additional $217 million on a low estimate of $194 million, with 15 of the 35 lots carrying third-party guarantees. (All quoted prices include buyer’s fees.)

“There’s less excitement for people in the salesroom, but guaranteeing lots is a natural choice in an uncertain economic market, especially for the major estates,” said Jussi Pylkkänen, former global president of Christie’s and founder of the London-based advisory Art Pylkkänen, speaking to ARTnews on Tuesday.

To Pylkkänen, the number of works going to third parties in Monday’s sale signaled “incredibly precise judgment and performance” by Christie’s specialists in pricing the works—even if the estimates were “strong.”

“Bear in mind, the third parties are bidders and real collectors, and they’re buying at the prices recommended by the house,” he said.

Piet Mondrian’s Composition with Large Red Plane, Bluish Gray, Yellow, Black, and Blue (1922), which once adorned the vestibule of the Riggios’ Park Avenue apartment, stole the show. While it fell short of the artist’s $51 million auction record, it came close: the $47.6 million sale marked the third-highest price ever paid for a Mondrian at auction.

Pylkkänen said the result reflected current demand for “beautiful objects as opposed to more intellectual works.”

“For both the day and evening sales, the most attractive objects by major artists are eliciting more competition than usual,” he added, citing an Henri Matisse charcoal on paper that sold well above its high estimate during Christie’s day sale of Impressionist and modern works on paper on Tuesday.

The Christie’s 20th century art evening auction was led by Claude Monet’s Peupliers au bord de l’Epte, crépuscule (1891), which fetched $49.2 million—just shy of its $50 million high estimate. Mark Rothko’s No. 4 (Two Dominants) [Orange, Plum, Black], 1950–51, from a group of nine works consigned by Sid and Anne Bass, took in nearly $39 million.

In total, the two sales generated $489 million for Christie’s—not a result to sniff at in a soft market. Afterward, Rachel White Young, co-head of the 20th century art evening sale, said she was “thrilled by such a positive reception from the market.”

Alex Glauber, founder of New York–based AWG Art Advisory, characterized the night as solid—but more respectable than exceptional, given current conditions.

“Christie’s had the unenviable task of going before Sotheby’s this week,” he told ARTnews, noting that going second often allows for adjusted expectations and estimates. “What’s clear is that we’re still in a tempered environment, and the house had to manage its risk accordingly—which it did with a lot of third-party guarantees.”

Guarantees may ensure sold lots, but the downside, Glauber reminded, is “toned-down bidding activity.”

Still, Monday wasn’t without drama. Two Warhols were pulled from the sale before they reached the block. Philip Hoffman, founder and CEO of the Fine Art Group, told ARTnews in an email that the withdrawals “highlight the ongoing challenge of selling higher-quality works at auction.” More sellers, he added, are turning to the private market.

Tuesday brought another example of the risks involved in selling top-end works without a guarantee. The cover lot for Sotheby’s modern art evening sale—Alberto Giacometti’s much-hyped Grande tête de Diego (1955)—carried a $70 million estimate but no third-party backing. Sotheby’s chief auctioneer and Europe chairman Oliver Barker opened the bidding at $59 million and nudged it to $64 million before withdrawing the lot after four minutes with no sale. (It’s believed the reserve was set at the $70 million estimate.)

The sale brought in $186.4 million across 60 lots, half of which were fresh to market. Fifty works sold, and 40 percent of them exceeded their high estimates. Pablo Picasso’s Homme assis (1969) achieved $15.1 million (high estimate: $18 million), while Georgia O’Keeffe’s Leaves of a Plant (1942) attracted nearly 30 bids before selling for $13 million (high estimate: $12 million). A Frank Lloyd Wright double-pedestal light fixture—shaped like a miniature Art Deco gazebo—softened the blow of the unsold Giacometti. It fetched $7.5 million, four times its last auction price in 2002.

Giacometti aside, the result was solid given the cool market, as was the case at Christie’s the night before. But did Sotheby’s benefit from going second, as Glauber and Pylkkänen suggested?

After Tuesday’s sale, Julian Dawes, Sotheby’s head of Impressionist and modern art, declined to speculate.

“The fact is that—with catalogues out in good time, and with long-running pre-sale exhibitions—collectors have the full picture before the season starts, so their plans are largely made well before the first hammer falls,” he told ARTnews. “Ultimately, we’re always happy to see strong results anywhere in the market, and there have been a good number this week, including in last night’s sale.”

The picture at Phillips, however, was less rosy. On Tuesday, its modern and contemporary evening sale brought in $52 million—meeting the low estimate. But enthusiasm should be tempered: That total represents a 40 percent drop from last May’s $86 million equivalent.

Despite the soft result, Phillips set five new artist records, all for women. They included ones for Kiki Kogelnik, with one of her figurative paintings selling for $280,000—nearly double its high estimate—and Ilana Savdie, who had a painting that sold for $180,000 (high estimate: $100,000).

With evening sales still to come tonight and Thursday, we sit squarely at halftime. While surprises are always possible, the remaining auctions are likely to follow the prevailing narrative: “Steady, still stratified, and leaning hard on proven names,” as ARTnews’s Daniel Cassady and Karen Ho wrote on Monday.

Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in On Balance, the ARTnews newsletter about the art market and beyond. Sign up here to receive it every Wednesday.

New tariffs under the Trump administration have affected shipping activity at US ports, curbed international tourism, caused volatility in the stock markets, and spurred predictions of a global recession. They’ve also set off a wave of panic among scrambling art professionals and now appear primed to impact art fairs.

New York Art Week kicks off next week with a bevy of art fairs: Frieze, NADA, the Future Art Fair, Independent, the 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, and TEFAF New York. TEFAF will likely be the one most affected, given the number of exhibitors who specialize in items subject to tariffs.

“I will be frank with you, it’s been a very, very torturous road,” Francis Petit, director of the New York office of art shipping company Gander & White, told ARTnews. 

The vast majority of original works of art, collector’s pieces, and antiques at least 100 years old imported into the US are still exempt from tariffs. However, the global art industry still has to deal with US import taxes of 7.5 percent on any artwork from China; tariffs of 25 percent on sculptures made of steel and aluminum; tariffs of 10 percent on all jewelry, furniture, and design pieces imported into the US; and counter-tariffs varying from 155 percent to 179 percent on items imported from the US to China. (Canada lifted its counter-tariffs on art imported from the US in March.)

Furniture and fine art intended for exhibition in New York at Frieze and especially TEFAF could also be tricky for US Customs to evaluate. 

“We had to explain to a lot of galleries—and they were understanding—that it’s not because this piece of furniture is very expensive: it was handmade, it is one of a kind, from a very well-known artist that was exhibited at many places, etc. That’s not enough,” Petit said,

Fritz Dietl, president of shipping company Dietl International, told ARTnews that his clients showing at TEFAF New York and Frieze New York modified operations to avoid tariffs entirely. 

All of them, he said, opted to not bring any material to the fairs that might be subject to customs duties. He added that the galleries he works with also rented furniture for booths instead of shipping it in. (Sometimes galleries will bring unique or designer furniture like a Donald Judd chair to stage the booth.) Some galleries, he said, are showing items that were stored in the US rather than shipped in from Europe, and have avoided bringing in items from China.

“It’s very unusual, because usually the galleries really bring in new material for a big event, like a Frieze or TEFAF fair,” Dietl said. “It seems like some galleries are very, very cautious and careful about costs right now.” 

Charles Ede, a London-based gallery that specializes in ancient art and antiquities, classified all the items it is bringing for its booth at TEFAF as “sculpture” with customs. The gallery did so even if the items could also be categorized more specifically on customs forms as ceramics or mosaics.

“There’s no one clear avenue that we should be taking,” director Charis Tyndall told ARTnews, adding that its offerings hadn’t cleared US customs yet. “We don’t know what’s going to happen.”

“All the antiquity dealers I’d spoken to seem to have done things slightly differently,” Tyndall added, noting that art shippers and lawyers have been reluctant to give clear pointers about how to proceed. “People are kind of giving advice, but not necessarily giving instructions, you know?”

Importantly, US tariffs are based on the country of origin of the artwork—where a given painting, sculpture, image, or other type of item was physically produced—rather than its creator’s nationality or the country from which the artwork is shipped. This means if an American artist produces an artwork or art-related item in China, it would still be subject to tariffs of 7.5 percent if imported to the US. 

During a webinar last week on tariffs hosted by Artlogic, the founder and CEO of art shipper Convelio, Edouard Gouin, also recommended detailed, precise pro forma documentation clearly stating an artwork’s country of origin and medium, along with details about its originality or rarity, as well as any other relevant information, including its Harmonized System code. “I would literally put in the HS code, and I would refer to the legal exemptions, because you never know how it’s going to be treated,” Gouin said, noting this approach would reduce the risk of an artwork being stuck at US Customs. 

Works by Les Lalanne, which have had a hot market of late, are a prime example of items that fall into a customs gray area. During the webinar, Gouin suggested that Lalanne furniture pieces could likely still be classified as artworks because of the artists’ intention, the recognition by the art market, and that the works are sold by an art gallery and many have been exhibited in museums. Petit, of Gander & White, wasn’t so sure, telling ARTnews that he thought chances were “pretty slim” that US Customs would classify the works as such. 

“By definition, furniture and design pieces are primarily furniture objects. And then they’ll be taxed accordingly,” Petit said.

Petit said some of the galleries he has worked with for the fairs next week have incorporated more paintings and sculptures rather than jewelry, furniture, or design objects to avoid tariffs, considered sending models instead of original pieces, or brought in items through temporary import bonds. The latter is something Gander & White typically doesn’t use for US art fairs because it restricts an item to only being exhibited and not sold, but still allows a gallery to bring in rare or unique pieces for a booth that has been planned for months.

“Frankly, if they have a wonderful piece, it is such a shame for them to not present it to the client,” Petit said. “It’s like the delivery of a baby, almost.”

Temporary import bonds still have a cost and risk associated with their use. Tyndall said it would have cost approximately £20,000 to bring its sculptures to TEFAF New York and keep them in bond. Charles Ede would also have to bring everything back to the UK in order to complete any sales, an arrangement that wouldn’t work for many lower-priced items. “When you’re buying a four- or five-figure piece, you don’t necessarily want to bring it back to the UK and then pay £2,000–£3,000 extra to ship it over again,” Tyndall said. “We wouldn’t be able to, and that could end up ruining a deal for us.” 

When ARTnews asked TEFAF New York about the impact of tariffs, a spokesperson said in a statement that the fair is in “close communication” with shippers, as well as legal, tax, and shipping advisors. The fair further said that it is analyzing the “exact implications of new developments” and has “taken an active role in advocating for the exclusion of artworks from potential EU reciprocal tariffs with the EU Commission.”

Even with the complications of the new tariffs, pulling out of an art fair isn’t an option for many galleries.

“If we don’t go to America, we will not get business from certain clients,” Tyndall said. “We will often find we just sell one thing to a person and never hear from them again, but they’ll buy an important piece. It’s that chance meeting that you get at these things.”

Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in On Balance, the ARTnews newsletter about the art market and beyond. Sign up here to receive it every Wednesday.

As the clock struck midnight Tuesday morning, President Donald Trump made good on his threat to impose widespread tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China, the US’s top three trading partners. China and Canada have already instituted retaliatory tariffs, with Mexico to follow as soon as Sunday.

If gallerists and art professionals were hoping 2025 would be a return to normalcy for the art world, the trade war has scuppered that notion. Dealers, museum directors, art fair directors, and art shippers told ARTnews that they are scrambling to adjust operations and understand the impact of the tariffs on future sales and acquisitions. The tariffs, they said, make the cost and process of selling, transporting, and exhibiting art significantly more complicated, expensive, and uncertain, especially after galleries spend months planning their participation in art fairs like Art Basel Hong Kong, Independent, and Frieze New York.

“It’s not gonna be very conducive to sales,” Gander & White New York director Francis Petit told ARTnews. “People won’t be so keen on on buying pieces, that’s for sure.”

“We’re looking at taxes that have never existed in this industry before,” Mia Nielsen, director of Art Toronto, Canada’s only international art fair, told ARTnews.

“I can’t quite wrap my head around all of it,” Toronto dealer Stephen Bulger told ARTnews after confirming he had canceled a solo presentation for a Canadian artist at the AIPAD fair in New York next month due to the new tariffs. “What’s the next shoe that’s going to drop?”

Works of art, antiques, and collector’s items were previously duty-free under the US Harmonized Tariff Schedule. But as of midnight on March 4, the US officially implemented tariffs of 25 percent on all imports from Canada and Mexico, as well as an additional tariff of 10 percent for all imports from China on top of existing duties. These tariffs are taxes paid by importers. The import tariffs for Canada and Mexico had previously been suspended for 30 days on February 3, and tariff rates for China under the Biden administration varied from 7.5 percent to 100 percent.

Canada and China have also implemented a variety of counter-tariffs against the US. Canada’s updated list of counter-tariffs against the US also includes “paintings, drawings and pastels, executed entirely by hand,” as well as all types of prints and photography. It does not include “hand-drawn plans and drawings used for engineering, architecture, and other purposes,” however.

While there is currently an exemption on import tariffs for artworks from China and Hong Kong to the US, many art supplies, business supplies, electronics, lumber (art crates and stretcher bars), event supplies, and inexpensive art-related merchandise (tote bags, sweatshirts, T-shirts, socks, umbrellas, and toys) manufactured in China will still be subject to the new 10 percent tariff if they are imported to the US.

North American prices for art shipping and transportation are also expected to rise due to the large import and export volumes of lumber (crates and stretcher bars), crude oil, and motor vehicle parts between Canada, Mexico, and the US. On March 4, the province of Ontario also announced a 25 percent tariff on electricity to New York, Minnesota, and Michigan.

On February 11, President Donald Trump also reinstated 25 percent tariffs on steel and raised tariffs to 25 percent on aluminum. Both materials are often used in sculptures, storage shelving, and the exteriors of art museums.

The new tariffs also compound challenges for many art professionals due to weak foreign exchange rates for Canadian dollars and Mexican pesos.

As of March 4, a work priced at US$10,000 would cost CA$14,445 and MX$209,200 before the 25 percent tariff. But with the tariff, its cost balloons to CA$18,056.25 and MX$261,500. Then, there would be local, provincial and federal sales taxes on top of that, too. If that artwork was by an American artist and sold by Bulger’s gallery in Toronto, it would also have a harmonized sales tax of 13 percent, pushing that US$10,000 work to a final price of CA$20,403.56.

New tariffs under a second Trump administration have been a topic of concern for Canadian art dealers since November because the Canadian economy is so closely tied to that of the US. But these tariffs also affect American art dealers. Many dealers in the US represent Canadian and Mexican artists, participate in fairs such as Zona Maco and Art Toronto, and sell to institutional clients and collectors in Canada and Mexico.

“The art market is a fragile ecosystem,” Mackenzie Sinclair, executive director of the Art Dealers Association of Canada (ADAC), said in a written statement to ARTnews. “Any change can cause unforeseen consequences with a rippling impact across our sector.”

At least one institution stocked up in advance of the midnight deadline. During the 30-day pause in tariffs between Canada and the US, the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) in Toronto purchased $1 million in art from galleries in New York and Los Angeles, according to a spokesperson, who declined to give further details.

“High tariffs will impact what art is purchased and where it is purchased,” AGO director and CEO Stephan Jost said in a written statement to ARTnews. “While I am enthusiastic about Canadians buying Canadian art, I am also keenly aware that Canadian artists deserve a global market and audience.”

Meanwhile, according to the ADAC, around 76 Canadian art dealers participated in 28 art fairs in the US in 2024. During two fairs in Canada last year, there were 14 US galleries exhibiting.

Gallerists are still figuring out what the new tariffs will mean in terms of future participation at international art fairs, even though the increased exposure can be career-changing.

In 2023, Daniel Faria Gallery exhibited a solo booth focused on the Toronto-based American artist June Clark at Frieze New York; the booth even got a mention in the New York Times. “That is huge for her career and for getting recognition in the US, in Canada and abroad,” Faria said, adding that the press attention led to sales with museums and collectors. Beth Rudin DeWoody, who appears on the ARTnews Top 200 Collectors list, acquired the metal sculpture Enough (from the Perseverance Suite) from Faria’s booth. “That was such a pivotal moment, and that could have only happened in New York,” Faria said.

Faria said that the US market has been “super important” to his business since he started in 2011. The gallery has shown works at Art Basel, Art Basel Miami Beach, and the Armory Show, and is committed to participating at the upcoming Independent art fair in New York in May. However, Faria is still figuring out how to adjust his operations with the new tariffs. “If we do an American fair,” he asked, “do we just show artists who live in Europe, and then the Canadians don’t get shown?”

Multiple sources mentioned Canada’s campaign calling on citizens to avoid buying American products and travel to the US. That campaign, these sources said, is now spreading to the art market.

“I think we all have to be, you know, honest and real that Canadians are going to be far less likely to buy American art and travel to American art fairs,” Nielsen said, noting she observed that curators from several major corporate collections in Canada did not attend Art Basel Miami Beach last December for the first time since she began attending the fair more than 15 years ago. “We’re already seeing this because Trump was elected.”

One silver lining to the tariffs may be the increased domestic and international attention on Canadian and Mexican artists. At last month’s art week in Mexico City, local and international galleries heavily emphasized Mexican and Latin American artists. It’s not hard to imagine an analagous trend continuing this month in Hong Kong, or at later this year at Art Toronto. “When we look at these mid-career artists, their work is a fantastic value compared to their US counterparts,” Nielsen said.

Even if the tariffs between the US and other countries are reduced in the future, there are already efforts to shift professional relationships to be less dependent on the US art market, similar to the situation in international security after President Trump paused aid to Ukraine.

Before the implementation of the tariffs, Nielsen had just spent the last several weeks in Mexico City, meeting local collectors and speaking with galleries about connecting its art market to Canadian collaborators. “They want access to bigger markets,” she said. “But they’re also looking for alternatives to America.”

“If the Americans just want to be by themselves, then you know, the world is a big place, right?” Bulger said. “There are lots of different friendships and alliances that can form really quickly—they might form because we’re in this economic war. In times of strife, people develop fast friendships with people that are in similar circumstances. If that’s what the States wants, that’s what they’re going to get.”

Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in On Balance, the ARTnews newsletter about the art market and beyond. Sign up here to receive it every Wednesday.

The wealthy appear to be forsaking the UK in droves, and newly initiated tax rules aren’t helping. Several art dealers and advisers told ARTnews they are worried about how those rules will impact the country’s art market and whether it will push more collectors to take their art-buying elsewhere.

While Brexit may have started the exodus, the current Labour government’s scrapping of non-domicile tax rules is taking the most heat. Last October, Labour announced in its budget that the UK’s current rules for non-doms, or UK residents whose permanent home is outside the country for tax purposes, would be abolished. The new rules, set to go into effect in April, will require all UK residents to pay tax on income, regardless of where they earned it. The UK Treasury predicts the policy will raise £33.8 billion over the next five years. And, of course, it’s set to affect the wealthy the most. 

(Those who support ending the tax break argue that the money raised could be used to offset the UK’s strangled public services.) 

A 2024 report by investment migration advisers Henley & Partners and global analytics firm New World Wealth found that over 10,000 millionaires (including 78 centimillionaires and 12 billionaires) departed the UK last year, a 157 percent increase from 2023. Meanwhile, UBS’s 2024 Global Wealth Report predicts that 500,000 millionaires will leave the country by 2028. (The Henley report defines a millionaire by liquid net worth, while UBS includes assets like art and property.)

The new tax rules, according to Henley & Partner’s Peter Ferringo, “rob the UK of billions of investment capital, especially for Americans keen to leave the US.”

“Brexit and the closure of the UK’s investor visa route mean that there are few arriving high net-worth people to replace [the departed millionaires] in the tax system,” he told ARTnews.

The situation is further exacerbated, according to Henley analysts, by the “dwindling importance” of the London Stock Exchange, the US and Asia’s dominance in tech, and the UK’s high capital gains tax.

Critics have slammed the Labour party’s move, though it bears mentioning that the previous Conservative government was also working on an overhaul of the non-dom tax regime. In January, the UK announced that the new tax regime would be phased in more gradually, but many have argued that too many millionaires—and art collectors—are being pushed out the door either way.

“Successive governments have done little to support the London art market,” Jussi Pylkkänen, the former global president of Christie’s and the founder of London-based Art Pylkkänen art advisory, told ARTnews.

“This is not smart because there is a great structure here, a tremendous number of young artists, agents, and museums who support them, and auction houses and galleries that bring countless wealthy, international collectors who buy in both the primary and secondary markets,” he said. “Art collectors are not all millionaires, by any stretch of the imagination. It is obvious that foreigners come to the UK to enjoy art and the cultural works of this country. To discourage them from visiting regularly, or even to settling here, is obviously a mistake on so many levels.”

French art dealer Almine Rech, who has locations in London, Paris, Brussels, New York, Shanghai, Monaco, and Gstaad, told ARTnews that some of her London-based collectors have already left the country.

“Once people go away and settle somewhere else, usually they don’t come back—when money leaves a place, it is not good,” she said. As for whether London is losing its status in the global art world—a topic of heavy conversation last fall—Rech speculated that the city might see Russian collectors return once the war in Ukraine is resolved. “I believe the UK has a strong capacity to react,” she added.

Milo Dickinson, the managing director of London-based Simon Dickinson Gallery, which primarily deals in Old Master paintings, similarly told ARTnews that the ongoing exodus is a “worrying development.”

“It will impact London’s position in the art market as well as damage lots of businesses downstream from the art market, like high-end restaurants, framers, conservators, and shippers,” he said. 

Dickinson added that, while his gallery—which had a record year in 2024—will not be “hugely affected” due to its “very international client base,” younger art dealers are likely to be “discouraged from setting up shop in London.”

Not all art dealers are losing sleep over the UK hemorrhaging millionaires, though. 

While Austrian dealer Thaddaeus Ropac said his London location has felt the phenomenon, with some of his UK-based clients changing their address, the city remains “a critical mass” and he is not expecting a “big change” in the London art market’s overall sales activity. 

“London is the biggest art market in Europe for turnover, and the city has always managed to reinvent itself,” he said. “Collectors will always come to London, so I’m rather relaxed.”

Ropac did just announce a new gallery in Milan last month, to add to his other locations in Paris, Salzburg, and Seoul, but he insisted those plans were years in the making and unrelated to Brits or other erstwhile UK residents moving to the city.

(Since 2017, Italy has offered a favorable flat rate tax for ultra-high-net-worth-individuals who moved their tax residency to the country. However, the government doubled the rate to €200,000 last year.) 

Jo Stella-Sawicka, a senior director of Goodman Gallery, which has spaces in London, New York, Johannesburg, and Cape Town, agreed with Ropac. “London’s collector base has always been a dynamic mix of British and international clients who consider the city their home, whether for business, education, or lifestyle,” she told ARTnews. “While shifts in non-dom status have influenced this landscape, we’re also seeing a positive trend with more American and South Asian collectors spending significant time in London and investing in homes here.”

Sotheby’s doesn’t seem concerned either. Julian Washington, the house’s head of tax, heritage, and UK museums and fiduciary, told ARTnews that reports of millionaires leaving the country should be viewed with “a bit of skepticism.” 

“It’s true that many wealthy people are leaving due to the change in the country’s tax regime, but the tax tail should not bite the dog,” he said. He raised questions about whether paying less in taxes really was “the single most important factor” for these members of the elite. “If it is, they’ll have to build a completely new life somewhere else.”

Christie’s and Phillips declined to comment on the new rules, while the UK Treasury did not respond to ARTnews’s questions about how they might impact the art market.

As with much else in the art market, we’ll just have to wait and see whether it’s the optimists or the pessimists who are proved correct.

Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in On Balance, the ARTnews newsletter about the art market and beyond. Sign up here to receive it every Wednesday.

“I was actually surprised, kind of shocked, when I got the email from Frieze that said they were moving forward with the [LA] fair,” a VIP fairgoer told me over drinks a few weeks before Frieze Los Angeles was set to open. “It feels strange after the fires to fly over there, get a hotel, get cabs everywhere. It’s climate thing, isn’t it? Doesn’t that feel wrong?”

In mid-January, as wildfires continued to devastate parts of the city, Frieze emailed its VIP mailing list to confirm that this week’s fair would indeed open its doors. For many in New York, this reality had still had not quite sunk in. Based on the images coming in from the wildfires, LA resembled more of a burnt-out dystopian future, than a sunny locale to shop for high-priced art. 

Among the tips and factoids, I heard from different sources: “Bring a mask, the air quality will be terrible.” “Don’t drink the water—motorcycles have melted into the ground.” “I heard the highways are still closed.”

By the end of January, the Palisades and Eaton fires had collectively burned more than 37,000 acres of land, blackened more than 1,500 structures, and claimed 29 lives, according to the New York Times. 

In its email to VIPs, Frieze reiterated that the LA fair plays a “key role as a place for creativity, connection, and resilience,” with this edition serving “as an opportunity to stand with the community in its time of need.” The decision, the email continued, was made “after careful consideration and extensive conversations with galleries, partners, and city-wide stakeholders.”

It would seem that the LA art world not only agrees with the fair’s role in aiding the community here, but that any East Coast twitchiness about Frieze going ahead is rather questionable, half-baked even.

“There are endless stories of people, artists, and art workers who suffered direct devastation because of these fires,” veteran LA dealer Tim Blum told ARTnews. “And every one of them will tell you that, listen, the city wants this. The city needs this. It’s not dangerous to be here and you’re not taking away space.”

Blum pointed to the level of post-fire activity in the city: the Hammer Museum opened its much anticipated Alice Coltrane show, while the Grammys, benefit concerts, and Lakers games have gone on, undisturbed. “People are back. Everything is happening. Coming here provides a big vote of confidence for LA in general and for the art world specifically.”

To what extent the energy Blum mentions will translate into a successful edition of Frieze, won’t be tallied until the fair tent on the grounds of the Santa Monica airport is folded up, though rumblings of dithering attendance from the collector class have been heard both in the US and across the pond. 

One art dealer with galleries in Europe and Asia told me that several collectors from the Midwest have decided to skip this year’s LA edition, adding that “people easily become hysterical in the face of bad news.” A planned patron trip hosted by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., has supposedly been cancelled. When asked, a spokesperson for the museum declined to comment. Another dealer told me that there is talk that some collectors, still feeling the fatigue from last year’s hectic fair calendar and auction square dance, are using the fires as an excuse to skip a fair that some see as less important than its East Coast counterparts. Multiple dealers said on background that no one was expecting strong sales this year.

Commenters on the most recent edition of Tim Schneider’s Grey Market newsletter had heavy thoughts about the fair’s decision, which Schneider himself described as “divisive.” Bianca Bova, a curator and critic, wrote that the fair’s decision to push forward essentially put the art dealers “who paid their booth fees in good faith” in the position of “simply eat[ing] the costs associated with participating” when it’s unlikely the fair will be a lucrative affair. “[It] feels like setting them up to fail.”

Another observer, identified by the Instagram handle @boughtinatauction, questioned the environmental and social ethics. “[O]ne must consider whether proceeding with a high-profile, luxury-driven event in the wake of an environmental crisis signals a form of cultural myopia.” When presented with this argument, more than a few of art dealers told ARTnews that stance was not only performative but also slightly embarrassing. “If that’s your stance, I get it,” Blum said. “But then don’t go to Miami. Don’t fly to Europe. Climate change doesn’t happen in a vacuum.”

Air quality forecasts for the span of the fair put pollution levels in Los Angles at only six points higher than in New York City, and the average in both cities falls neatly in the “good” category according to IQAir, an air purification and monitoring company. (Thursday in LA, the day Frieze opens, is the only outlier, where the air quality peaks into the moderate category.)

New York dealer Alexander Gray is a staunch believer in the Los Angeles cause. He wrote an impassioned letter to his clients, urging them to be in Los Angeles for art fair week. “The feeling of helplessness has been overwhelming for those of us who want to help in the moment,” Gray wrote. “What can we do? We can show up.”

Like Blum, Gray said his understanding is that not only are there plenty of hotels in the city to accommodate visitors, but that to visit would be a contribution to the local economy, both art-wise and more generally. He also said that most of the collectors in the city had been paid out by insurance, and many are eager to replace things lost to the fires, a sentiment also echoed by Blum. 

“Let’s not forget that the overriding reason all of us do art fairs are relationships,” Gray, who has participated since the inaugural 2019 edition of Frieze LA, told ARTnews by phone. “And sometimes the transactions lead to relationships, sure, but more often relationships lead to transactions. I really think that this is when we’re going to see the best of the relational aspects of the fair and the power of this convening mechanism that we need more than ever.”

Those relationships come at a hefty cost, especially for galleries who depend on sales at fairs to fund their program throughout the year. At least eight galleries that were on the official exhibitor list in January no longer appear to be participating in the fair, including Seoul’s Gallery Hyundai; Jenkins Johnson Gallery, of San Francisco and New York; Mexico City’s OMR, and Various Small Fires, which is headquartered in LA and has spaces in Seoul and Dallas. (None of the aforementioned galleries returned a request for comment.)

VSF, which opens an exhibition for Mark Yang on Tuesday, may be the outlier. In an email blast on January 23, the gallery said it would take a hiatus from all fairs in 2025 in an effort to “take action to dramatically reduce the emissions footprint of our business.”

The letter continued, “We strongly believe that we can continue to do the work of effectively representing artists, making their work visible and salient to the global arts community, and dramatically reduce our carbon footprint by availing ourselves of smart uses of technology and a strategic approach to shipping and travel.”

Blue-chip European dealer Thaddaeus Ropac added a bit of pragmatism to his feelings of journeying to LA this week. “There was a moment where we were of course considering not going, but we always said if it goes ahead, we will go,” Ropac told ARTnews. “But ultimately, we felt if the art community wants us to go, we will be there despite not knowing what to expect.”

That sense of uncertainty could be seen as a benefit. Art fairs can be monotonous and overbearing. An element of surprise can be exciting.

LA dealer Carlye Packer, who is participating in both Frieze and the Felix Art Fair at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, said she expects the turnout at Frieze to be something special, or at least, out of the ordinary. “I’m excited about both fairs because we are living in such a bizarre time,” she said.

“And I think like interesting things happen in bizarre times. People are more open to ideas and have few expectations. There’s a lawless, Wild West vibe in the air, and I think that’s something we should lean in to.”

Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in On Balance, the ARTnews newsletter about the art market and beyond. Sign up here to receive it every Wednesday.

This has already been a tough year for the art industry: there have been sales slowdowns and fragmentation, devastating fires in Los Angeles, and continued wars in Gaza and Ukraine. And that’s not to mention a new US President who has thrown a wrench into just about everything.

Add to all this the proposed tariffs and counter-tariffs between the US and several countries, and more complications are likely to result—especially as the art fair calendar really gets moving, with Frieze Los Angeles set to take place next week and Art Basel Hong Kong scheduled for March. It is clear, at least, that fairs are paying attention. When ARTnews asked Art Basel Hong Kong about the tariffs, a spokesperson said in a statement, “Our team is closely monitoring evolving trade conditions and any potential impact on our exhibitors. We are consulting with trade experts, staying closely connected with our galleries, and remain committed to delivering the best possible experience for our exhibitors and visitors.”

Experts offered ARTnews a bleak picture of the year to come, saying that the tariffs will increase confusion and operating expenses, shift buying behavior among collectors, as well as hurt small and mid-size galleries the most due to limited resources.

“If you’re spending 10 million on a work of art and you’re paying $1 million or $2 million, or even $2.5 million in tariffs because it was imported, you’d say, ‘No way. Forget it. It’s a write-off of $2.5 million. I can’t do that. I’ll go for real estate, or I’ll go for stocks and shares,’” Philip Hoffman, founder and CEO of the Fine Art Group, told ARTnews. “It’ll be the kiss of death.”

Tracking these tariffs is itself a challenge because they are often delayed just as quickly as they are announced. That was exactly what happened when, on February 3, President Donald Trump and the leaders of Canada and Mexico agreed to delay tariffs and counter-tariffs of 25 percent for 30 days. The announcement came not long before the start of Mexico City Art Week.

Where, exactly, the tariffs apply is itself confusing. Canada’s list of items that would have been subject to counter-tariffs included original hand-drawn paintings, drawings, and pastels. A new tariff of 10 percent on goods from China did go into effect at midnight on February 3, for a total tariff rate of 17.5 percent. But a notice from the US Customs and Border Protection agency on February 5 said that objects such as “publications, films, posters, phonograph records, photographs, microfilms, microfiche, tapes, compact disks, CD ROMs, artworks, and news wire feeds” were exempt.

The exemption for artworks is subject to interpretation by US Customs and Border Protection officers. The possibility of incurring a total tariff rate of 17.5 percent—due to misinterpretation or additional changes in US trade policy—could be enough to deter many US-based collectors from even considering acquiring artworks made in China and Hong Kong.

“The extra 10 percent is not for the time being, as of today, applied to artworks,” said Claudia Albertini, director of Massimo De Carlo’s Hong Kong location and co-director of the Hong Kong Gallery Association. But, she warned, “It may be. So we need to be aware of that, because things change continuously.”

Hoffman, the Fine Art Group founder, said some methods to bypass tariffs were used after Brexit, which he described as a “nightmare.” Those methods included shipping works to other regions or countries first, storing originals in warehouses or freeports, and displaying high-quality reproductions.

“At the top end, there will be structures created to move art from one place to the next, but most people won’t be able to afford that or have the ability to do that,” Hoffman told ARTnews. “And then it’ll just give another knock to the international art market.”

And even with this tariff exemption for artworks, many art supplies, business supplies, electronics, lumber (art crates and stretcher bars), event supplies, and inexpensive art-related merchandise (tote bags, sweatshirts, T-shirts, socks, umbrellas, and toys) manufactured in China will now be subject to this 17.5 percent tariff if they are imported to the US.

“Everything that’s affordable is going to become unaffordable,” Denise Nicole Green, associate professor of fashion design and management at Cornell University, told ARTnews in reference to Uniqlo’s popular lines of art-related clothing. “The things that were inexpensively manufactured abroad are going to be more expensive, especially for these accessible brands.”

Art shipping rates are also expected to go up due to the additional paperwork required and new operating expenses. “It wouldn’t surprise me if you’re starting to see disruptions right now as importers try to get ahead of tariffs and import as much as they possibly can,” Wendy Edelberg, a Brookings Institute senior fellow and an economist, said. “That, in of itself, is going to raise prices.”

On February 10, Trump also implemented a 25 percent tariff on all steel and aluminum imports into the US. The US gets most of its steel from Canada, Mexico, and Brazil. Steel is used in many large-scale installations by contemporary artists such as Jeff Koons, Anish Kapoor, Yayoi Kusama, and Antony Gormley. Both materials are also integral to the construction industry and feature in the exteriors of major art museums.

The issue of tariffs will likely only get worse for art professionals across the industry for the rest of this year. Trump has also threatened tariffs against the European Union, Taiwan, and other countries. Edelberg said small businesses like galleries will have a harder time dealing with tariffs—including thinking about supply chains, renegotiating contracts, and lobbying the government. These galleries are already at a disadvantage based on their size, and they will be at a further loss here because they have less bargaining power than blue-chip galleries with multiple locations worldwide.

“They’re going to have less bargaining power with their customers, and so they’re going to be able to do less of a good job of passing along higher prices, which just means if they want customers to still buy their products, they may well have to really eat the tariff on their own. That’s going to make it a lot less profitable to be in business,” Edelberg said. “Costs are going to be higher across the board.”

Other art professionals are not as pessimistic. Wendy Xu, general manager for White Cube’s Asia operations, said, “At present, we are not foreseeing a major impact, but we continue to closely monitor the situation.”

Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in On Balance, the ARTnews newsletter about the art market and beyond. Sign up here to receive it every Wednesday.

Prominent galleries have continued to grow despite post-pandemic profit stagnation, according to UK financial records filed with Companies House, a branch of the government that maintains records for businesses established there. Filings for galleries like Lisson, Thaddaeus Ropac, Pace, and David Zwirner were reviewed by ARTnews; they cover a period between 2019 and 2024. The filings, which exclude US spaces run by these galleries, show that financial losses didn’t hamper expansions in various parts of the world like Europe and Asia.

All companies in the UK of a certain size—in terms of assets, employees, and/or turnover, among other factors—are required to submit such filings. In the US, such financial reporting is only required of publicly traded entities.

Worldwide, Lisson saw a substantial drop in revenue—nearly 30 percent—and a corresponding shift to being in the red. For its fiscal year ending in 2023, the gallery brought in £96 million and made a profit of £3.8 million. For its fiscal year ending in 2024, it brought in £68.9 million and saw a loss of £5.5 million.

In a director’s report included in the filing, CEO Alex Logsdail blamed the drop on a “global slowdown” while expressing confidence that Art Holding Co. Limited—the family-owned parent company overseeing Lisson’s seven locations, including its London, New York, Belgium, and Shanghai galleries—was well-positioned to recover. The gallery noted in its filing that it mitigates risks associated with the “inherent volatility” of the contemporary art market by offering a “diverse spread of artists across a wide price spectrum.”

In a statement to ARTnews, a spokesperson for Lisson said that 2024 was a profitable year, with a “double-digit revenue recovery driven by a return to normal trading after the challenges of 2023.” Lisson declined to disclose its 2024 figures, which could not be independently verified by ARTnews.

One reason for the loss is Lisson’s operating costs, which remain substantial, accounting for 64 percent of turnover in the 2023–24 period and 70 percent in the period prior. The overall turnover for Lisson’s flagship in London, which accounts for the majority of the gallery’s turnover, went from 78 percent between 2022 and 2023 to 73 percent between 2023 and 2024.

Despite the turnover and profit setbacks, Lisson has continued to grow since the pandemic, if incrementally. In 2020, the gallery paid £7.7 million in wages to just under 90 employees. In 2023, it paid £10.7 million in wages to around 100 employees.

It’s worth noting that the overall health of the gallery appears to be good: its shareholder funds, the capital the gallery uses to keep itself running and an indicator of its net worth, has grown since the pandemic, going from £20.9 million to £30 million between 2020 and 2022, then down a bit, to £24.7 million, at the end of 2023.

Like Lisson, Austrian gallerist Thaddaeus Ropac’s London branch steadily grew its workforce despite losses in revenue.

At the London location revenues rose from £34 million between 2019 and 2020 to £45 million between 2022 and 2023, and then to £49 million between 2023 and 2024. But that’s an overall drop from the £49 million that the London branch made in 2017, the year the location was inaugurated.

Profit growth at the London location has been similarly up and down, going from £2.9 million during the 2020–21 period to £11.9 million in 2022, then down to £9.4 million for the 2023–24 period. Still, by 2023, the profitability of Ropac’s London location stayed stagnant, under the pre-pandemic level of £10.7 million the gallery reported in 2019.

In the director’s report included in the filing, Ropac attributed drops in revenue and profit to “the global slowdown of art sales and difficult trading conditions for many participants.” (Ropac’s London location reports to a parent company registered in Austria, where the gallery was originally founded.)

Still, wages increased. Staff at the London location hovered around 20 people between 2020 and 2023, but total wages went up around 35 percent, to a high of £2.7 million last year.

As is the case with Ropac’s reporting, Pace Gallery’s UK financial filings don’t provide a complete picture of the business, since they do not account for sales from the gallery’s headquarters in New York. The filings cover the Hong Kong, Beijing, Seoul, and Geneva locations, along with London, which are all domiciled in the UK under Pace Gallery Limited. Between 2023 and 2024, Pace saw turnover of £105 million, with operating costs accounting for 75 percent of that figure. After other administrative costs were factored in, the gallery reported bringing in £5.5 million profit, a 12 percent increase from the £4.9 million earned during the 2022–23 period. (The 2023–24 filings exclude Pace’s Tokyo location, which opened this past July.)

Along with the increased profit, the gallery paid £6 million in total wages to 50 employees for 2022–23, a 30 percent jump from what it paid out in 2017.

Investments in wages, as well as advances to artists to maintain current projects, led to growth over the last several years, according to Pace. In the last five years, the sales of artworks originating from overseas locations in Asia and Switzerland has risen significantly. In 2019, the gallery reported £37 million in turnover, compared to £104.9 million last year, a 180 percent increase. During that same period, profit also rose by 24 percent. (Pace’s US entities account for about 80-85 percent of total sales.)

Unlike Pace, one of its competitors, David Zwirner saw a small loss in the same period. David Zwirner Limited, a UK subsidiary within a network of 11 others overseen by Zwirner’s parent company, saw profits fall by £200,000 between 2022 and 2023, even though sales increased by 27 percent, jumping to £52 million. That figure was still 15 percent below the £61 million sales generated in 2019 before the pandemic.

Another takeaway from the filings is where sales are coming from. At Lisson, the proportion of overall sales coming from the UK and Europe fell, from 20 percent in 2020 to 15 percent in the 2023–24 period. At Pace, sales of art to UK collections accounted for around 10 percent for 2023–24. A look at where Ropac London’s sales come from may shed some light on the gallery’s plans, announced last month, to open a new space in Milan. For the 2023–24 period, 71 percent of the London location’s sales volume went to collections in the UK and Europe, but only 8 percent came from the UK itself.

Frieze also filed reports related to its London and Seoul fairs that are available via Companies House. A director’s report noted that Frieze is focused on going where galleries go, and that it intends to put more resources toward Asia, even when there are profit dips. Frieze’s events, which are registered separately from Frieze magazine, have seen revenue growth, from £21.7 million for 2022–23 to £24.9 million in 2023–24, but post-tax profits dropped by over 50 percent during the same period, from £3.7 million to £1.7 million. (The filings exclude figures for Frieze’s New York and Los Angeles locations; a spokesperson for Frieze declined to comment.)

Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in On Balance, the ARTnews newsletter about the art market and beyond. Sign up here to receive it every Wednesday.

After the pandemic, works by young, unproven artists flew off dealers’ walls onto the auction block, where these pieces set records. Over the past two years, that trend seemingly came to an end amid high interest rates and geopolitical and economic instability. Now, the market is more fragmented, with a greater emphasis than ever on quality.

Collectors—the good ones, anyway—have started to look for value, advisers have told ARTnews, eschewing the figurative work that has more recently dominated the market for works on the margins of art history. Last year, more attention was paid to overlooked modernists and  Indigenous artists . This year, don’t be surprised if collectors looking for a hidden gem turn their focus to outsider art. (The term “outsider art” is itself the subject of debate, with some opting for the term “self-taught art.” For simplicity’s sake, we’ve used the term the auction houses use and kept the term “outsider art” throughout the piece.)

Last week, Christie’s held a 145-lot sale dedicated to outsider art, the latest in a series of dedicated auctions held by the house since 2016. This year’s sale wasn’t a blowout success overall, generating just over $1.8 million, with a sell-through rate of 90 percent by lot and 85 percent by value. (All prices include fees and buyers premium.) That’s down from 2024, when the equivalent sale generated $2.5 million on 128 lots, with admirable numbers for Thornton Dial,Minnie Evans,Amos Ferguson, and Anna Zemánková.  However, there were numerous lots that over-performed. One artist’s auction record was even broken twice in the same sale. William Hawkins’s Juke Box (1987) sold for $98,280. Then, 10 lots later, Hawkins’s Neil House with Chimney #2(1989) brought in $113,400.

(Most of the works at the Christie’s sale fell comfortably between their high and low estimates which means the auction house was able to gauge their value appropriately and collectors responded in kind.)

“There’s real interest today in collecting art by people with different backgrounds, with different sources, and with different focus,” Christie’s head of Americana and outsider art, Cara Zimmerman, told ARTnews. “A lot of the collectors who are looking at outsider art are people who say ‘I know about the modernists, I know about contemporary art, where can I fill in the gaps?’”

Outsider art, for those unfamiliar, typically designates self-taught artists who have no formal art training, with little or no connection to major institutions. Outsider artists have received so much attention from the market and museums over the last year that Valérie Rousseau, a curator at the American Folk Art Museum, suggested in a year-end piece for Art in America that we have reached a “new normal as to who counts as an ‘artist’ in the first place.” 

Among the shows Rousseau pointed to were “Projects: Marlon Mullen” at MoMA, “Mary Sully: Native Modern” at the Met, “Creative Growth” at SFMoMA, and “The Way I See It: Selections From the KAWS Collection,” which showcased KAWS’s forward-thinking championing of inspired underdog artists. Late last year, Hauser & Wirth held an exhibition of large-scale works by Thornton Dial, an artist who has been collected by MoMA, the Met, and other major museums, and “Edges of Ailey,” a Whitney Museum show about the dancer Alvin Ailey, teems with works by outsider artists, with pieces by Sam Doyle, Purvis Young, and others sharing space with ones by blue-chippers like Rashid Johnson and Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Amos Ferguson, one of the stars of Christie’s outsider art sale in 2024, had four works in this year’s equivalent auction. A jaunty, impossibly blue picture of five birds fishing sold for $27,720 against a high estimate of $10,000. Another Ferguson, Untitled (Yellow Flower), earned $15,120 against a high estimate of $5,000. James Castle’s Untitled (Abstract Book), one of several lots from the William Louis-Dreyfus Foundation, was estimated to sell for between $12,000 and $18,000, and ultimately sold for $31,000. (Many works by outsider artists aren’t dated. Zimmerman said that this was common, as “some of these artists created over the course of many years, and there wasn’t always a linear progression to their expression.”)

Auction houses, museums, and galleries have historically marketed outsider artists to the public by focusing on biography. In the case of Castle, for example, the house noted in its lot description that he was born deaf and mute, and that he could not read. Many have critiqued this tendency, claiming that it exoticizes outsider artists and pointing out that this terminology is disproportionately applied to artists who artists of color, disabled artists, and queer artists.

Most agree, though, that outsider art must be studied differently from work produced by people who are professionally trained. “In some ways this work has always served as a salve or antidote to contemporary art,” Andrew Edlin, an art dealer and the CEO of the Outsider Art Fair, told ARTnews. “It’s not really hyper-conceptual or based on any art historical trends or references.”

One reason that outsider art has gained so much recognition is that curators have begun presenting it in the world’s biggest shows. Massimiliano Gioni notably featured such art in his 2013 Venice Biennale, “The Encyclopedic Palace,” as did Cecilia Alemani in her 2022 Venice Biennale. The 2024 Venice Biennale, by Adriano Pedrosa, included historical sections in which outsider artists, many of whom were Indigenous and from the Global South, were placed alongside modernists who are more well-known.

In a recent column for Cultured, adviser Ralph DeLuca wrote that collectors need to look “beyond labels,” revisit the undervalued, and “embrace the outsider” to get ahead this year. “In this day and age to separate artists by any label, including their art educational background is just less and less relevant,” DeLuca told ARTnews. “Connoisseurship has been in a coma for long enough. It’s all art, and we should be collecting without prejudice.”

We’ll have to wait and see whether that embrace this year becomes a full-fledged hug or the awkward shoulder-hug-pat-on-the-back combo. For those interested in expanding their view past traditional art history, into the arena of the self-taught, Edlin suggested that, first and foremost, collectors must have the courage of their convictions.

“Don’t treat art like a commodity,” Edlin offered. “It’s not a mutual fund. Art like this should be breath of fresh air.” The eye develops over time, he said, but what’s important is that something strikes you. “Outsider art is about creativity. It’s more personal and not meant for a market.” Of course, like any segment of the art market, there is research one can do, auction records to sift through, and museum collections to peruse. But for Edlin, nothing should eclipse intuition and instinct.

For those whose interest is piqued, the Outsider Art Fair opens in New York on February 27 and runs until March 2.

Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in On Balance, the ARTnews newsletter about the art market and beyond. Sign up here to receive it every Wednesday.

Usually when you hear about Soho House during Art Basel Miami Beach, it’s because the private members’ club has thrown another swanky party at its Miami Beach location. But last month the spotlight instead fell on the club’s vast art collection. On December 5, Artnet News published a rosy interview with Soho House’s chief art director, Katie Bryan, about how she is populating the company’s 45 international clubs with artists by trading memberships for art. A week later, Artsy published a glossy look at the long history of Soho House’s art collection via a poolside talk with Bryan and others during Art Basel.

Such glowing press might be unremarkable if it didn’t come at a pivotal moment for Soho House, which first opened in 1995. On December 19 the club announced that it had received a buyout offer valuing it at $1.75 billion. The news came nearly four years after the company went public, and nearly a year after Wall Street research firm Glass House released a scathing report likening Soho House to WeWork, saying the former has a “broken business model” and “terrible accounting.” (Soho House disputed the findings, claiming they contained “factual inaccuracies, analytical errors, and false and misleading statements.”) Last May, Fortune reported that investors have put increasing pressure on CEO Andrew Carnie to get the company to turn a profit. The December announcement of the buyout offer sent the stock price skyrocketing by over 50 percent. However, the company’s market cap is still far down from its IPO valuation of $2.8 billion.

Is the focus on the art collection a distraction from the financials—a signal to the market about a valuable asset the club could eventually sell? Or is it an effort to burnish the club’s reputation as a place for top creatives rather than mid-level bankers, aspiring startup founders, and the laptop class?

There’s a good chance it might be the latter. When Soho House went public in 2021, it faced a seemingly unresolvable contradiction: Wall Street’s inherent demand was for it to exponentially grow a membership whose value is predicated on exclusivity and cultural cachet. Between 2021 and 2024, the club grew from 30 locations and 119,000 members to over 50 locations (that figure includes dedicated co-working spaces, hotels, and beach clubs) and nearly 270,000 members. During that three-year period, members have complained of overcrowding and bad service, according to the Wall Street Journal. Some have also grumbled about the clubs becoming synonymous with fratty “hustle bros,” the seeming antithesis of the cool, creative clientele that formed the company’s reputation in the late ’90s and early 2000s. Last February, an article in the New York Post about the club’s dire financials quoted an unnamed “New Yorker in the fashion industry” saying “Vibe is off. Mostly crowded and the scene feels oddly the opposite of creative.”

This isn’t the first time the club has faced a “cool” crisis: in 2010, the company declined to renew the membership of hundreds at its New York Meatpacking District branch in an effort to “get Soho House back to its creative roots,” per then CEO Nick Jones. (A year before that, it designated the club as a suit-and-tie free zone.) This time around, that strategy appears to be slowing down the rapid expansion. This past December, Bloomberg’s Chris Bryant wrote that the newest branch, Soho Mews House in London, “feels like a riposte to those who say the chain has lost its luster and is full of Gen-Z posers—membership is by ‘invitation only’ and laptops are banned.” The company, Bryant wrote, was shifting from opening 10 new venues a year to three and focusing on the quality of its members over quantity.

All of this may put the PR push about the collection into context: what better way to foreground the creativity of the membership than to advertise the fact that artists (actual creatives!) have been bartering artworks for membership? The collection, started in 2009, has grown to a staggering 10,000 pieces and includes works by mega-stars like Damien Hirst, Rashid Johnson, and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, whose auction records range from $3 million to $14.8 million, and countless emerging and mid-career artists.

Almost all of the works, which are displayed across the club’s various locations, were acquired through the barter program. The system is a shrewd, effective way of splicing artists into the club’s membership. But how does it work exactly?

“If an artist tells me that one of their works is worth £6,000 [$7,340], I’ll say ‘great.’ If they are over 27 years old, Soho House’s annual global membership rate is £3,450 [around $4,220] and the remaining £2,550 [around $3,120] would be given to them as credit. It really is as simple as that,” Bryan told ARTnews.

Soho House’s art collection seems like a rare win-win—the club gains desperately needed cool and creative members to offset its increasingly corporate brand. In exchange, artists get access to a service that would otherwise likely be outside their price range. This, in some part, is the oxymoronic democratization of an exclusive members’ club.

“Some artists join the collection early in their careers and later become museum-level names,” Bryan told Artnet. “My job can feel surreal—sometimes I’ll get a text from an important artist saying, ‘I’m about to have a show at the Guggenheim; do you want to visit my studio?’ Really, they’re saying, ‘I’d love some more credit to stay with you.’ Soho House has become a key part of their infrastructure.”

But, when you think a bit deeper about the company’s dire finances and the as-yet-to-be-revealed third party offering to purchase Soho House, it gets stickier. The company has reported that it is over half a billion dollars in debt; its stock price has long been floundering; and, as revealed by Fortune, investors want to see pay dirt. It doesn’t take a crystal ball to foresee a world where a private equity firm purchases the company and starts salivating at monetizing some, ahem, unrealized assets.

Soho House is, of course, quick to shut down any discourse lingering on the monetary value of the art collection, except to confirm that it is regularly appraised by Bonhams for insurance purposes. 

“Quite frankly, I think it would be somewhat tacky to tell you how much it’s worth, because we don’t prioritize financial value,” Bryan said. “I would hate for the artists to think that we would put a value on it. It just doesn’t work that way. We love having artists in our houses and their work on the walls to reflect the creative community.”

Even so, Bryan wasn’t shy in telling Artnet that a work she bought for the company by Hilary Pecis from one of the painter’s first shows may have exploded in value. Bryan said: “I remember seeing this newspaper article being like, ‘Hilary Pecis, young L.A. painter, sells for $350,000.’ This was two years later, and it was from the exhibition that I bought from.” (Pecis’s current auction record, achieved at Christie’s last November, stands at $1.2 million.)

Soho House may not like it, but here’s some back-of-the-napkin math on the collection. Given that a yearly membership is £3,450 [around $4,220], we might assume that the total value of the 10,000-work collection is roughly, at minimum, £34.5 million, or about $42.2 million (Bryan told Artnet that “99 percent” of the collection is bartered.). However, when ARTnews pressed Soho House on where the collection appears on the company’s SEC filings (since the collection constitutes an asset), a spokesperson pointed to the “Fixtures and fittings” line item. On its 2023 annual report, that category, which also includes appliances, furniture, and other decoration at Soho House’s worldwide locations, was a shade over $355 million, providing, at least, an upper limit to the collection’s material value. For comparison, the ritzy casino-hotel franchise Wynn Resorts, founded by ARTnews Top 200 collectors Steve Wynn and Elaine Wynn, has a “Fixtures and fittings” value of $3.3 billion across its four casino-resorts and two luxury towers. Its locations are full of high-priced art, including pieces by Andy Warhol and Jeff Koons. Marriott, a hotel chain with over 9,000 locations, has a more modest “Fixtures and fittings” total for its size, of $622 million.

Soho House refuses to be drawn into a discussion on the financial value of its art, but a collection possibly worth somewhere between $42 million and $355 million is a golden asset for a business that’s perennially in the red. If the company’s precarious financial standing meant it was forced to liquidate its assets, the creditors would waste no time sending that material to an auction house. After all, the global financial crisis saw investment bank Lehman Brothers and now defunct camera-maker Polaroid sell major collections to pay baying creditors in 2010. And more recently, at the end of last year, Japan’s severely indebted DIC Corporation announced it will be selling a chunk of its prized collection housed in the Kawamura Memorial DIC Museum of Art.

If Soho House should suffer the same fate, the auction house that won the tender would distill the collection. One Sotheby’s specialist told me that when they sell large collections, 80 percent of the value is typically generated from 20 percent of the volume.

When asked directly about the possibility that the club could sell its collection in whole or part at some point in the future, a Soho House spokesperson wrote over email to ARTnews, “The collection is over 16 years old and nothing has ever been sold. The acquisitions, which number over 10,000 pieces, have been made for permanent display to support artists and for the members to enjoy with no commercial motivation.”

Never say never.