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.

Amid a sluggish art market and concerns about new tariffs, the design category keeps growing. Earlier this month, as much of the art world was in Basel, the major auction houses each held design sales that outperformed expectations.

Sotheby’s design sales in New York totaled $37.5 million, and Christie’s totaled $23.6 million; Phillips, which staged just one sale in this category this time, brought in $4 million. By comparison, last year, Sotheby’s reported $19.5 million in design sales, Christie’s reported $15.5 million, and Phillips reported $5.1 million across two sales with significantly more lots. Across all three houses, that’s a 62.3 percent year-on-year increase.

Experts told ARTnews there are multiple factors behind the category’s continued momentum for established names and a broad range of artists.

Lewis Wexler, who previously served as Christie’s assistant vice president of 20th-century decorative arts, told ARTnews there has been a “paradigm shift,” with collectors purchasing design in the same way they approach fine art.

“There’s always a demand for lighting, benches, sofas, and things along those lines,” said Wexler, who currently runs an eponymous gallery in New York and Philadelphia. “I think there has been a realization that you can obtain the same quality and caliber in the design world that you can find in the paintings hanging on your walls.”

That awareness has increased due to larger budgets for interior design, notable gallery exhibitions and institutional acquisitions, greater auction data about the investment value of collectible pieces, and the re-evaluation of artists such as Sonia Delaunay and Toshiko Takaezu, both of whom were the subject of major shows in New York last year.

Claire Warner, cofounder of Chicago’s Volume Gallery, which focuses on material-driven art practices and design, told ARTnews that the ongoing “technological revolution” has pushed collectors toward items that are “handmade” and “well-crafted.”

“People’s understanding of this work is becoming much more fluid and not as siloed,” said Warner, who previously worked as a design specialist at the Wright auction house in Chicago.

Betsy Beierle, a senior sales associate at the design gallery Carpenters Workshop, told ARTnews that collectible design has a “cross-market fluidity” that draws buyers from multiple sectors.

“It appeals to art collectors, institutions, people working in design, architecture, fashion, and industrial design,” Beierle said.

Global interest in the category, especially from younger buyers, has also helped many design items exceed high estimates at auction.

At Sotheby’s design sale on June 11, 76 percent of the lots sold above their high estimates. Christie’s and Phillips also noted that a significant number of lots in their sales surpassed high estimates, including the three-pane, six-foot-tall Goddard Memorial Window by Tiffany Studios, which sold for $4.29 million on a $2 million–$3 million estimate. That is the second-highest price at auction for a window from the artist’s studio. Those results are especially notable given the few house and third-party guarantees offered at the sales.

The houses also saw an expanded audience this month, with Sotheby’s and Phillips reporting that more than 20 percent of buyers at their major design sales were new to the houses. Sotheby’s reported a 64 percent increase in bidders compared to last year, and a 76 percent increase in buyers. Phillips noted that millennial and Gen Z collectors made up 20 percent of bidders at its design sales this year.

“At least half the people I sold [Les Lalanne works] to last year are younger than me, which is extremely encouraging,” 56-year-old art dealer Ben Brown told ARTnews, noting his London gallery’s representation of Les Lalanne since 2007 and the ‘Planète Lalanne’ exhibition in Venice, Italy last year featuring more than 150 works. Brown added that he is frustrated that Lalanne works have been categorized as design.

The success of design objects at auction has been apparent even outside of dedicated sales, underscoring their crossover appeal. In May, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Double-Pedestal Lamp from the Susan Lawrence Dana House sold for $7.5 million at Sotheby’s modern evening sale, far exceeding its $3 million–$5 million estimate. But the spike in design interest has been most apparent in the market for works by François-Xavier and Claude Lalanne, as ARTnews reported in April. Four of the top 10 auction sales for works by François-Xavier took place last year, and at Sotheby’s design sale on June 11, Grand Rhinocéros II sold for $16.4 million—his second-highest price at auction.

Meanwhile, the result at Christie’s for the Tiffany Studios window was boosted by recent acquisitions of other large Tiffany windows by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. Dealers told ARTnews that institutions have increasingly acquired design works by both established and emerging artists. For example, Carpenters’s Beierle placed Spanish artist Nacho Carbonell’s One-Seater Concrete Tree (2022) with the Cincinnati Art Museum for its outdoor sculpture garden in 2023, and Marcin Rusak’s Van Florum 23 (Hybridae Florales) at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta last year.

According to Volume’s Warner, when the gallery has worked with institutions like the Art Institute of Chicago and LACMA in recent years, curators from multiple departments—including contemporary art, design, American art, fiber art and architecture—have collaborated to acquire design works, with the idea that they may be used across different exhibitions.

The strength of the design category was also reflected in works priced under $500,000, many of which exceeded their estimates and helped set new artist records at auction this year.

American artist and furniture designer Judy McKie is one who has seen that kind of market bump. At Phillips’ design sale in New York on June 10, the top lot was her Fish Bench, which sold for $406,400 with fees, on an estimate of $150,000 to $250,000—setting a new auction record. By comparison, another edition of the same patinated bronze sculpture sold for $327,600 on a high estimate of $100,000 at Rago Auctions in 2023. Other editions of the bench are in the collection of the Longhouse Reserve, at Eastport Park in Boston, and in a public park in Walnut Creek, California.

Despite institutional acquisitions at places like the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, McKie’s prices at auction and in private sales remain relatively accessible.

“Even with the tariffs, the prices are still more easily digested than Les Lalanne,” said Wexler, who has represented McKie for years. “In fact, I literally just sold a monkey chair this week for $110,000.”

Other auction records in design have been set this year for Louis Cane, Maria Pergay, and Jean Puiforcat.

Expectations of even more growth in the future

Multiple dealers told ARTnews they expect prices in the design category to continue rising as buyers get priced out of works by top names; as design furniture, ceramics, and textiles continue their shift from craft to fine art; and as expectations for masterpieces recalibrate.

Aside from the Lalanne effect, Wexler said the prices for McKie’s bronzes are also likely to rise due to limited inventory. “I think that’s also increasing the desire for collectors to purchase the work,” he said.

Brown similarly believes auction estimates for Les Lalanne works remain too low, particularly when comparing limited-edition masterpieces like Grand Rhinocéros II to other works like the Mouton wool and concrete sheep sculptures.

“You can’t have a situation where a masterpiece is worth 10 times a perfectly nice medium-plus object by an artist,” Brown said, noting the sheep were in editions of 250 compared to the Grand Rhinocéros II, which exists in an edition of 8. “When you’ve got a discrepancy of 10 between a good and a great work, there’s something wrong.”

Brown said he expects more people to understand the appeal of Les Lalanne through his gallery’s upcoming exhibition on the French couple, René Magritte, and Surrealism, opening this fall in New York.

“When you’ve got Lalanne standing next to Magritte and standing up for themselves and looking strong, I don’t think anybody’s doubting that Magritte is a great artist,” Brown 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.

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.

On Monday, Phillips announced several major changes to its leadership team, led by the resignation of global chairwoman Cheyenne Westphal, who is leaving the auction house after holding the position since 2017.

“I am grateful to my wonderful colleagues at Phillips for eight exceptional years and I now look forward to starting an exciting new chapter in the art world working with private collectors and artists directly,” Westphal said in a statement. “The art market is an ever changing industry and I look forward to being at the forefront of its next evolution.”

While the auction house has not yet named a new global chair, it did announce that Robert Manley was named chairman of modern and contemporary art, while Miety Heiden was appointed chairman of private sales.

CEO Martin Wilson said in a statement that Manley and Heiden’s promotions are “a testament to their exceptional expertise and dedication to the category of Modern and Contemporary Art. Their deep understanding of the market, coupled with their trusted relationships with collectors around the globe, has made a significant impact on our clients and the wider art and culture communities.”

Manley joined the auction house in 2016 as deputy chairman and senior international specialist of 20th century and contemporary art, after 16 years at Christie’s. He was most recently deputy chairman and worldwide co-head of modern and contemporary art.

Heiden, meanwhile, joined Phillips in 2017 as head of private sales after over 20 years at Sotheby’s where she served a senior vice president and head of contemporary private sales for North America. In a statement, the company touted that Phillips has increased its annual private sales by 46 percent and grown PhillipsX, its exhibition platform, from hosting just eight sales when she arrived in 2017 to 27 last year. Heiden helped organize the house’s well-regarded “New Terrains” selling show last year that focused on contemporary Indigenous art.

In addition to Westphal, Jean-Paul Engelen is also leaving the auction house after over a decade. Engelen is currently president for the Americas, and worldwide co-head of modern and contemporary art. He will join Acquavella Galleries as a director on July 1. During Engelen’s tenure at the house, he helped Phillips increase its auction sales by 72 percent worldwide between 2015 and 2021.

The leadership shakeup comes after a shaky marquee auction season this month. While last week’s modern and contemporary evening sale achieved its pre-sale estimate of $52 million, that figure was 40 percent below last year’s haul of $86 million at the equivalent May sale. The night did have a few bright spots, namely five records for women artists, including Kiki Kogelnik and Ilana Savdie. However, five lots failed to sell and four others were withdrawn prior to the auction.

The moves are also the second major leadership changes in just six months. In December, deputy CEO Amanda Lo Iacono stepped down after just a year in the position, and Wilson was named CEO after Ed Dolman, who held the dual position of CEO and executive chairman for the year, also resigned as CEO. (Dolman is still executive chairman.) Stephen Brooks stepped down as CEO in December 2023.

New York–based Acquavella Galleries announced today that Jean-Paul Engelen will join the business as a director, beginning July 1.

Engelen is currently president for the Americas, and worldwide co-head of modern and contemporary art at Phillips auction house, where he has been for the past decade. In 2022, Engelen was promoted to Americas president after having been deputy chairman, alongside his role heading the modern and contemporary art department. During his tenure at the house, he helped Phillips increase its auction sales by 72 percent worldwide between 2015 and 2021.

In a statement, Bill Acquavella said Engelen “brings invaluable experience and an unparalleled understanding of the post-war and contemporary art world to our global business. JP’s executive expertise, institutional and client relationships, and keen commercial insight will be an asset to our growth. His vision and leadership will undoubtedly enrich the gallery’s future, and we look forward to his contributions in shaping the next chapter at Acquavella.”

Acquavella, which is currently run by two generations of the family and was founded nearly a century ago, is primarily known for its secondary market dealings, mounting shows spanning Impressionism to Cubism and Surrealism to Abstract Expression and Pop. Additionally, it has mounted secondary shows for contemporary artists, and represents four contemporary artists— Miquel Barceló, Jacob El Hanani, Damian Loeb, and Tom Sachs—on the primary market.  

Engelen’s departure from the auction world comes after the marquee May auctions last week. All three major houses—Sotheby’s, Christie’s, and Phillips—held sales that saw considerable drops from the equivalent sales last May. Phillips, in particular, generated $52 million in its modern and contemporary sale, a 40-percent drop from the previous year.  

Prior to Phillips, Engelen served as director of public art and exhibitions at the Qatar Museums (previously Qatar Museum Authority), where he oversaw the installation of works by Richard Serra and Damien Hirst. Previously, he had worked at Christie’s for 16 years, beginning in the mid-1990s. It was around this time he first met Bill Acquavella.

“The Acquavella Family has always been the gold standard in our industry as long as I have been in the Business,” Engelen said in a statement. “Their business acumen, discretion, and family values make Acquavella unique in the art world. Now, after five years in Qatar and building Phillips as a serious competitor to Christie’s and Sotheby’s for the last ten years, it is time for a new challenge in my career. We are entering a new era in the art market, and together with the Acquavellas we see a lot of opportunities to continue growing the business. I am grateful for their trust.”

While speculative sales of contemporary artworks and works by young artists fell in 2024, women artists, lower-value works, and sales in New York rose, according to the 2025 edition of the Hiscox Artists Top 100 (HAT 100) report.

In 2024, sales of contemporary artworks fell 27 percent, to $698 million in 2024. That figure is down from the $956 million reported in 2023.

Flipping appears to have fallen out of favor, with total sales of “wet paint” artworks (ones sold at auction within two years of being created) by artists under 45 falling 64 percent, to $14.1 million, down from $38.8 million in 2023. The HAT 100 report also noted that the number of works in this category fell to 698 lots from 924 in 2013, and that nearly one-in-five of these did not sell. That’s “the highest proportion in seven years,” the report said.

“With sales at a seven-year low, the speculative fever that took hold in 2022 and 2023 is now ended,” said the report, published by a global specialist insurer Hiscox, with research done by art market research and analysis firm ArtTactic.

Robert Reed, head of art and private clients for Hiscox UK, called these percentage changes “astonishing,” but noted that the HAT 100 report focuses on auction sales data for works of art produced after 2000—”a small segment of a tiny market” compared to the overall art market, the luxury market, or especially a multinational company like Walmart.

“I don’t want to get too obsessed with some of the percentages, because actually, you’re talking relatively small amounts,” Reed told ARTnews. “And relatively small amounts can make quite a big percentage change in a small market.”

Even within that smaller segment of the overall art market, the total sales value of post-2000 artworks priced at over $1 million fell by 41 percent, and the number of these high-value lots also fell 31 percent compared to 2003.

Most of those 2024 sales (51 percent) took place in New York, up from 42 percent the previous year. London also increased its market share to 25 percent compared to 21 percent in 2023.

As a result, sales in Hong Kong fell 52 percent, the lowest level since 2018. The volume of lots sold dropped 24 percent, and the city’s market share declined to 21 percent, down from 32 percent in 2023.

On the positive side, Yayoi Kusama continued her popularity on the auction block, with the highest total sales by a contemporary artist for the second year at $58.8 million. Reed credited the results to the artist’s well-known personal brand with global recognition. “I think that inevitably sustains your market,” he told ARTnews. “And also, she does produce some show-stopping works public spaces, that really do get recognition in a way that an artist producing paintings won’t.”

One big change between 2023 and 2024 was the rise in sales for works by French sculptor François-Xavier Lalanne, who had the second-highest auction sales total by value ($52.9 million), and works by his wife Claude Lalanne, who had the fourth-highest total for female artists ($9.75 million).

“If you said the year before [Les Lalanne] were going to feature so much in 2024, no one would have predicted it,” Reed said.

A big factor in these results was the Christie’s New York auction dedicated to works by François-Xavier last October, which included 70 sculptures from the personal collection of the couple’s daughter, Dorothée. Shortly afterward, François-Xavier’s Herd of Elephants in the Trees Table (2001) sold for $11.6 million with fees during the Sydell Miller evening sale at Sotheby’s New York last November.

Other positive highlights from the HAT 100 report include a 12 percent increase in the number of artists offered by Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Phillips, to 2,602; and more women artists among the auctions among the three houses (822 in 2024 compared to 728 in 2023).

When asked about what the results of the HAT 100 report indicate for auction sales this year—especially after the fires in Los Angeles, the impact of the new tariffs for imports to the US, the ongoing stock market volatility, and predictions of a global recession—Reed compared the current “seismic” moment to aftermath of the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008.

“People will just stop buying and people will stop selling,” Reed said, noting the number of works priced at $10 million or above “completely dried up” in the 12 months after the investment bank filed for bankruptcy, with only two ten-figure lots selling the year afterwards. “The sales volume will really shrink. And then the market always comes back.”

After Brexit, Hiscox is much more conscious about the movement of its own corporate art collection of 1,000 pieces, spread across its 30 offices, and the likelihood of incurring import taxes if items are moved in and out of its European offices. Reed said concerns about a trade war and tariffs will also affect where artworks will be consigned with auction houses. “There’ll be some markets where it’ll be easier to sell art than others,” he said.

On the bright side, 2025 will also have opportunities for anyone still looking for new acquisitions. “If you’re a buyer, this is a buyer’s market,” Reed said. “You are going to have time to make your decisions; you’re not going to be pressurized by dealers.”

“For those that are buying, life is going to be sweet for the next year. The choice might not be as good as it was normally, but life will be sweet.”

Phillips auction house has appointed Bernd Runge, a former publisher at Condé Nast and Interview Magazine, as its new COO. Runge, who previously served as Phillips’s CEO from 2009 to 2013, returns as the house undergoes a significant shift in its leadership.

According to public filings with the UK’s corporate register, Runge, a German citizen, assumed the role at the end of last month after departing Interview Magazine. News of Runge’s appointment by Phillips was first reported in Puck’s “Wall Power” newsletter.

He led Phillips before its 2017 acquisition by Russian retailer Mercury Group. In 2018, Runge joined Mercury’s executive board but stepped down in October 2020, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Phillips Assets Limited, the holding company overseeing the auction house’s UK, European, and US locations, reported a 21 percent decline in turnover between 2022 and 2023, bringing revenue to just under £100 million. Financial losses continued to mount, rising from £17.4 million in 2021 to £30 million in 2022 and £50 million in 2023.

A director’s report, signed by Phillips’s CFO, attributed the losses to declining sales growth. Christie’s, a competitor to Phillips, also reported a similar downturn in the same period. According to filings for Christie’s International PLC, a holding company that covers the accounts of many of the company’s international locations, profits fell from £125 million in 2022 to £74 million in 2023. Despite this decline, a an audit stated that Christie’s had sufficient capital to meet financial goals through 2024 and 2025.

Runge’s appointment follows the resignation of Ed Dolman, Phillips’s former CEO and executive chairman, who will transition to a consulting role in May 2025. Dolman, who joined Phillips in 2014 and became executive chairman in 2021, said he had plans to remain in the arts, but has not disclosed any details related to future projects. Amanda Lo Iacono, Phillips’s deputy chief executive, also stepped down after eight years with the company.

A Phillips spokesperson declined to comment on the leadership changes or Runge’s appointment.

In a new report reviewing last year’s fall auction season, veteran art market analysts Michael Moses and Jianping Mei have said it was “the worst overall financial performance” for the art market this century. However, several art market experts have contested that assessment, telling ARTnews that they think the report is flawed by “sample selection bias” and gives a narrow, unnuanced view of the art market.

“For the first time this century, the mean of all individual returns was negative,” reads the report, titled “How Bad Was the Fall 2024 Auction Season? Hard to Believe, But Worse Than the Spring.”

It claims “52 percent of the works sold produced a negative return.”

This latest report, which Moses and Mei started sending out via email at the end of December, follows an analogous one released last year by the duo. It similarly declared that the spring 2024 auction season was the worst in nearly 25 years, saying it was “financially as bad as it gets.” For the spring report, the duo analyzed about 50,000 repeat sales of artworks at Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Phillips over the last 25 years. Only works first purchased at any worldwide auction from 1970 were included. The report used each repeat sale to compute the compound annual return (CAR) of the fluctuation in price over time between purchase and sale. According to the research, the mean return for repeat sale pairs of artworks last spring was almost zero, the lowest since 2000.

For the fall sales, the pair—who run JP Mei & MA Moses Art Market Consultancy–adopted the same methodology and analyzed around 56,000 repeat sales. “For the first time this century the mean of all the individual semi-annual returns was negative (-0.1 percent),” the report says.

“I was very surprised by the fall results,” Moses told ARTnews in a recent interview. “I thought the art market might start to turn, but it clearly hasn’t quite hit the floor. The question becomes, like in stock parlance, are you attempting to catch a falling knife?”

Now retired, Moses was previously a professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business. Mei is a professor at Beijing’s Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business. Their new findings come after Christie’s recently announced its 2024 sales across both art and luxury had dropped by 8 percent compared to 2023, while Sotheby’s revealed this month that its 2024 consolidated sales were down 23 percent compared to 2023.

Clare McAndrew, an economist who pens the annual Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report, as close to industry-wide economic data as the art market has, told ARTnews that she is skeptical of Moses and Mei’s findings. Using only repeat sales, she said, is “sample selection bias.”

“You’re only accounting for works that have been sold twice, and you’re ignoring all the single sales, which eliminates a whole batch of contemporary and other material,” she said. “Say a work has been sold ten times, by galleries or privately before being sold at auction, [Moses and Mei’s report] doesn’t take this into account, either. There’s a whole swathe of sales that are not included in this methodology.”

McAndrew suggested that only surveying results at the three major auction houses—Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Phillips—is further sample selection bias. Artworks in the report’s dataset for repeat sales could have been sold at other auction houses numerous times.

“There’s nothing wrong with the technique used [by Moses and Mei], but it doesn’t necessarily explain how the art market is going,” McAndrew said. “They’re making out that everything is bad, that’s just not necessarily true.”

In response to McAndrew’s claim that the report is guilty of sample selection bias, Moses told ARTnews, “Yes, we do have selection bias in the sense that we are only looking at works that have sold twice, but among those works, we’re not making selection bias. The only way to compute returns is to select works that have been publicly and transparently sold twice.”

He added, “I wish there was some way to verify gallery and private sales, but there is enormous selection bias when you ask individuals how they’re doing. They always tell you their successes, they never reveal their failures.”

New York-based art advisor Adam Green, who presents the ArtTactic podcast, told ARTnews that the art market’s health is more nuanced than the report claims. “While market analyses, such as the one conducted by Mei Moses, provide useful insights into overall trends, the art market is highly nuanced,” he said. “Many distinct sub-markets exist not only by collecting category but also at the artist level, making overarching assessments only somewhat relevant. Although the overall market softened this past year, the full picture is more complex.”

When asked about McAndrews’ suggestion of sample selection bias, Moses responded, “We analyzed almost 1,000 artists who have at least 10 repeat sales pairs each, so it’s a pretty broad selection.”

When asked if only using repeat sales from the top three auction houses gave too narrow a picture of the art market, Moses likened that focus to stock market analysts focusing on the S&P 500, and added that sales at those houses counts for 95 percent of the dollar volume of public art sales worldwide.

“The most important factor is to try and add transparency to the market,” Moses said. “And the only place you get true transparency is at auction and/or sales that have tax associated with them. Other than that, we can talk about the market and total revenue and things like that, but it really doesn’t say much about the financial returns available in the art market.”

Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Phillip’s declined to comment on the report.

Phillips reported $843 million in global sales for 2024, with $721 million in auction revenue—a 14 percent decline from the $840.7 million the house reported generating through that channel in 2023. The disappointing numbers come as other large auction houses report similarly depressed sales totals compared to prior years.

Despite the drop, Phillips reported an 86 percent sell-through rate by lot across sales offices in New York, London, Geneva, and Hong Kong. Eighty percent of the items offered at public sales sold at premium prices above their estimates, the house said.

Accessing a younger demographic has been a continued focus for Phillips in recent years, according to past annual reports. Collectors around the age of age of 40 or younger made up 30 percent of bidders and buyers, with nearly a third of them transacting with Phillips for the first time in 2024.

Last year, $121 million in the house’s sales turnover came from private sales, including editions the house commissioned from artists for a newly established digital platform that has lower price points. Sales of watches and jewelry remained stable as art sales slowed down. The house reported that design sales maintained a 90 percent sell-through rate and watches have generated more than $200 million for four years in a row.

In 2024, Phillips was still recovering from a slow 2023. In a director’s report filed as part of a financial audit for the house’s UK branch that was reviewed by ARTnews, the house said that competition to sell the highest-valued works, a particularly large revenue driver, was rising and affecting Phillips’s ability to hit its profit-making goals.

In the description of Phillips financial position, the 2023 report continued to state that the London-based house, which operates using loans from a Russian-owned parent company, Mercury Trading Group, has been “historically loss-making,” noting that the “process of sourcing these items (works of art) is highly competitive, which puts pressure on profit margins due to the rivalry among industry players.”  

Phillips declined to disclose an estimated percentage of profit generated from its 2024 sales.

Phillips has named Martin Wilson as the house’s new chief executive officer amid another leadership shuffle, succeeding Ed Dolman, who held the dual position of CEO and executive chairman over the last year, and is now departing from the house after ten years. Wilson previously served as Phillips’ chief legal officer.

The move coincides with the departure of Amanda Lo Iacono, the company’s deputy CEO, a position she held for only a year. Lo Iacono moved in the position just last year when Stephen Brooks, Phillip’s former CEO and an ex-Christie’s executive, left the position abruptly after just over two years with the auction house.

Lo Iacono, who was with the auction house for a total of eight years, will leave the position at the end of December 2024, to pursue outside opportunities.

Dolman will remain Executive Chairman through May 2025 before moving into a consultancy role. A veteran executive who led Phillips through a period of growth beginning in 2014, he was reinstated to combine his current role with the CEO position after Brooks left.

According to a statement, Wilson, who was also once a Christie’s executive, has been involved in facilitating major sales at the house and has ties to the collectors behind them.

The shift comes at a time when Phillips, the smallest of the three major auction houses, faces a challenging economic climate alongside Sotheby’s and Christie’s. There was an estimated 25 percent drop in auction sales between 2023 and 2024. Sotheby’s laid off over 100 employees last week as the house carried out an internal restructuring.

Dolman, who previously led Christie’s and Qatar Museums, was credited with raising Phillips’ global profile, particularly in Asia, and honing a focus on sales by emerging contemporary artists. (Phillips has not yet released its annual figures from 2024.)

“After a decade at Phillips, it is time for me to turn to new pursuits and to explore new ways of engaging in the world of art. In these ten years, I had the privilege of working with a world-class team to grow Phillips’ impact and reach with extraordinary record-breaking sales in new locations worldwide,” Dolman said in a statement.

In January, several industry insiders predicted there would be more attention paid this year to Indigenous and Native art. That month, Phillips was gearing up to hold “New Terrains,” its first selling exhibition of contemporary Indigenous and Native art at its New York headquarters. Quickly, it became apparent that the predictions made around the time of the Phillips show were correct. Later that month, the Venice Biennale would announce its artist list for the main exhibition, “Foreigners Everywhere,” which included numerous Indigenous artists. 

Now, 2024 is nearly complete, and further proof that Indigenous art is on the rise has arrived in museums, auction houses, and galleries. Jeffrey Gibson (Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians/Cherokee), the artist who represented the United States at the Venice Biennale, got representation with Hauser & Wirth. Emmi Whitehorse, a Diné painter who showed in the Biennale’s main exhibition, gained a new auction record at Phillips, where one of her paintings sold for over $177,000—nearly nine times its high estimate. A retrospective for Aboriginal painter Emily Kam Kngwarray continued to travel Australia, and even resulted in the late artist’s addition to Pace’s roster.

It’s clear that Indigenous art is gaining more mainstream notice than ever before. But, some dealers, art advisers, and auction house executives said the impact of all this on the market remains uncertain.

Multiple sources said the Venice Biennale had a significant impact in bringing global attention to Indigenous artists. 

“There were Native artists from the United States, but there were Indigenous artists from Indonesia, from Africa, and especially from Latin America, because that is Adriano’s expertise,” Mary Sabbatino, vice-president and partner of Galerie Lelong, told ARTnews, referring to Biennale curator Adriano Pedrosa. “I think that will have a ripple effect for 10 years.”

Along with Whitehorse, the main exhibition included Brazilian Yanomami artists Joseca Mokahesi and André Taniki; Indigenous Australian artists Marlene Gilson and Naminapu Maymuru-White; Māori artists Sandy Adsett and Selwyn Wilson; and Native American artist Kay Walkingstick (Cherokee).

“I met so many new people as a result of them having seen those pieces,” gallerist Garth Greenan, who represents Whitehorse and a significant number of other Indigenous and Native artists at his eponymous New York gallery, told ARTnews.

The Biennale also awarded its top prizes to the four Māori women of the Mataaho Collective and Archie Moore (Kamilaroi/Bigambul) for the Australia Pavillion. 

Artist Nicholas Galanin (Tlingít/Unangax̂) told ARTnews that, while the work by Indigenous artists featured at the Biennale was amazing, he was not surprised by its inclusion. “I’ve been able to cross paths and meet so many incredible artists throughout the last 25 years of plus, or whatever, how long I’ve been doing this,” he told ARTnews. “I’ve known these artists and their work, and I’ve always known it’s been great.” 

Galanin also had a banner year, with work featured in the Phillips sale, solo exhibitions at the Baltimore Museum of Art and Peter Blum Gallery in New York, and a Guggenheim fellowship. Earlier this month, during Art Basel Miami Beach, Galanin unveiled a newly commissioned installation on Faena Beach near the fair.

Indigenous and Native artists also figured prominently in PST ART, the recurring initiative funded by the Getty Foundation, in which over 70 California institutions stage exhibitions around a single theme. For this year’s edition, “Art & Science Collide,” the Los Angles County Museum of Art, the Fowler Museum at UCLA, and the Autry Museum of the American West all staged shows centered on Indigenous artists. Numerous other shows included Indigenous works.

Fragmentation at Auction and Private Sales 

Even with the significant rise in visibility, interest in works by Indigenous artists has been fragmented this year like the rest of the art market. While new auction records were set for Whitehorse and Kent Monkman (Cree) in May at Phillips, Gibson’s 2014 sculpture Always After Now failed to sell during his evening sale debut that same month at Sotheby’s.  

For Phillips, the “New Terrains” exhibition in January and a Monkman sale via its direct-from-artist DropShop platform prompted more appraisal inquiries and interest, but the house has been offered far fewer consignments than expected for top-level artworks in the category, according to deputy chairman and head of private sales, Miety Heiden. 

“The answer we got is, ‘If we sell it now, we don’t get it back again,’ which I think is absolutely true,” Heiden told ARTnews. “We keep on looking for a great Fritz Scholder, a great [George] Morrison, but they’re incredibly hard to find, and people are not very willing to sell.”

Another complicating factor to growing the appeal of this category is the subject matter broached by many Indigenous artists, who have historically dealt head-on with land ownership, colonialism, and racism, often in conceptual ways.  “It’s more complex often, given the historical references, given the hardship they went through as Indigenous artists in their communities [and] how they got marginalized,” art adviser and gallerist Thomas Stauffer of the Zurich-based Gerber & Stauffer Fine Arts told ARTnews.

Greenan was not surprised Phillips didn’t experience a booming market in private sales and auction consignments after its selling exhibition. “It’s not about a fast, immediate return,” he said. “It’s about inclusion and a kind of holistic embrace by institutions, private museums, galleries, etc., and by art history in general.” 

Several sources echoed Heiden, noting the growth in demand for mid-career and historic artists such as Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (Confederated Salish/Kootenai tribes), Scholder (Luiseño), Morrison (Ojibwe), T.C. Cannon (Kiowa/Caddo), Oscar Howe (Yanktonai/Dakota), Andrea Carlson (Ojibwe), Dyani White Hawk (Sicangu Lakota), Rose Simpson (Santa Clara Pueblo) and Galanin.

“I used to be able to buy George Morrison [works] at auction for nothing all the time, and now I can’t,” Zach Feuer, cofounder of the Forge Project and director of the Gochman Family Collection, told ARTnews. The competition for masks by Beau Dick (Kwakwaka’wakw) has also noticeably risen. “I got outbid on two of them this month, so I am definitely getting beat out on that,” Feuer said.

Artist Tony Abeyta (Navajo), one of the three co-curators of “New Terrains,” said some of the works sold after the Phillips sale, which also prompted new commissions and representation for several participating artists. “For me, that’s what I loved about it,” he said. “We were able to make connections with New York and Indigenous artists throughout the country that might not have had that opportunity.”

Several Indigenous artists had their first shows in New York this year, including Ishi Glinsky (Tohono O’odham Nation) at PPOW, Rachel Martin (Tlingít) at Hannah Traore Gallery and Teresa Baker (Mandan/Hidatsa) at Broadway. “I think all of those shows did really well,” Feuer said. 

Greenan said he observed greater institutional interest for artists he represents, including Smith, Whitehorse, multimedia artist Cannupa Hanska Luger (Mandan/Hidatsa/Arikara/Lakota), and weaver Melissa Cody (Navajo).

“There’s been so much steady institutional activity, because that’s where I think the biggest edict is,” Greenan said, noting that sales to individual collectors interested in filling gaps in existing collections of American and contemporary art have also been steady as well. 

And, at Art Basel Miami Beach this year, Sabbatino noticed the large booth for Greenan’s gallery in a prominent location. The presentation included works by Cody, Luger, Whitehouse, and Quick-to-See Smith among others. 

“I think that is an indication that those artists are not marginal or a number of them are considered important artists to show, not in a niche fair, but in a global, central art fair—a Basel fair,” Sabbatino said.

An Ongoing Process

Artists who are not straight white males are not so immediately accepted and integrated into museums, galleries, and art history textbooks, which means that Indigenous artists face a difficult battle. Some artists said they were aware of the challenges involved.

“All I know is it’s an ongoing process that takes centuries to fulfill,” filmmaker, artist, and curator Dana Claxton (Wood Mountain Lakota First Nation) told ARTnews. 

In between milestones like auction records, major institutional acquisitions, biennial inclusions, and installations at major fairs, Indigenous artists like Galanin also have simpler goals, like helping pay for the college tuition of his six children. “My goal is to be able to put them through at least some form of higher education,” he said.

As the profile and interest in Indigenous artists continues to grow, Abeyta has also noticed more young, with contemporary Indigenous artists feeling encouraged to be experimental in how they think, create, and collaborate. “I’m more interested in that than hearing about one artist who’s selling something for $1.2 million,” Abeyta said.

Read more of our “2024: Year in Review” coverage here.