The art market isn’t broken, exactly, but in the eyes of art market veterans Ed Dolman, Alex Dolman, Brett Gorvy, Philip Hoffman, and Patti Wong, it doesn’t function the way it used to. The group aims to change that with a new collaborative consultancy, New Perspectives Art Partners (NPAP), announced Thursday.

The consultancy won’t operate like a normal firm: each partner is keeping their day job, and they’ll only assemble when there’s a high-level, specialized problem that needs solving. Think of it like the Avengers, but for the art world.

“We’re not just another advisory,” Gorvy told ARTnews over the phone earlier this week. “This is more like a McKinsey model—a team that comes together to dissect a problem and solve it.”

NPAP isn’t looking to simply broker sales. Instead, it will advise collectors, fiduciaries, and family offices on how to manage, grow, or disperse significant collections with global context and institutional muscle. A major selling point is the group’s deep experience across different segments of the market—from auction houses and top galleries to institutions and high-end advisory—and a geographical footprint that spans Hong Kong to Doha.

Gorvy and Dolman both acknowledged that the current art market is at an inflection point. “We’re not starting this in a boom,” Gorvy said. “We’re starting this in a market that’s becoming complex.”

Dolman pointed to the proliferation of third-party guarantees, declining resale premiums, and regional fragmentation as evidence of a “paradigm shift” in the auction market, with the biggest houses becoming “victims of their own success.”

“What used to be a straightforward business has gotten massively complicated,” Dolman said. “That auction model, once full of surprise and upside, now feels rigid—designed more to manage risk than to serve buyers.”

Gorvy suggested that the market’s fragmentation and increasing complexity have created an opening.

“The tried-and-tested platforms are all showing signs of failure—or at least exhaustion,” Gorvy said. “But that chaos creates opportunity. If you can help clients navigate it, you can add real value.”

NPAP, the partners say, draws strength not just from its flexible structure but from the chemistry behind it. Dolman and Hoffman have known each other since the early 1990s. Gorvy worked closely with Dolman in the early 2000s. And although Patti Wong was a longtime competitor—she led Sotheby’s Asia while Gorvy served as Christie’s chairman and international head of postwar and contemporary art—Gorvy always admired her from afar.

“I was jealous of her power in the marketplace,” he said.

Both Gorvy and Dolman stressed that discretion is baked into the consultancy’s model. There’s no brand-building exercise, no junior staff scrambling for consignment quotas.

“Relevancy is what we keep coming back to,” Gorvy said. “What’s relevant to collectors right now? What’s relevant to institutions? To fiduciaries?”

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.

Back in June, Puck’s Marion Maneker created a minor stir when he proposed a previously untold effect of the ongoing art market slowdown. High interest rates, he reported, had slammed the brakes on art lending, the growing business of banks and specialist firms lending against high-net-worth collectors’ art.

The macroeconomic theory appeared sound. In the 2010s and the Covid era, interest rates were at their lowest level in decades and the value of artworks had risen steadily. Borrowing money had never been cheaper. But by this year, with interest rates on the incline over the last three years and the art market seemingly ground to a halt, one theory was that the loan business would slow as well.

But conversations with half a dozen specialist art lenders, as well as those at major banks, paint a far different picture of the art lending sector, one in which business is booming, in no small part because of the larger stalling of the art market.

Among the big bank lenders, the largest, by far, is Bank of America. While a source speculated to Maneker that the bank’s $10 billion loan book had dropped to $8 billion over the last 18 months, Drew Watson, the head of art services at the bank, said the bank’s book was actually up 10 percent this year.

That growth, Watson told ARTnews, is tied to a long-term trend possibly more vital to the art world than interest rates: collectors are increasingly incorporating their art holdings into their “overall wealth strategy.”

“There’s also a generational shift happening now. Younger people are being more opportunistic about their collections and other tangible assets,” he said, pointing to the annual Art & Finance report by Deloitte and ArtTactic. Published last year, it estimated that the art lending business was up 11 percent from 2022, reaching a total value of between $29.2 billion and $34.1 billion.

Watson added that the less than “robust” current market is another factor pushing collectors toward loans. “Borrowing when the market is down is an alternative that some collectors pursue to avoid selling into a down market,” he said.

The other two major institutional players are Citibank and J.P. Morgan. While J.P. Morgan declined to comment on its art loan business, Citibank’s head of art finance, Fotini Xydas, told ARTnews that its portfolio over the last decade has nearly doubled, the size of the art loans growing as well.

“While our largest market continues to be North America, with approximately 70 percent of our art loan portfolio overall, we have seen particularly strong growth in EMEA [Europe, Middle East, and Africa] and APAC [Asia-Pacific], with average annual growth rates of 18 percent and over 100 percent, respectively, over the past seven to eight years,” Xydas said.

But, as Watson put it, the art lending business is actually two very different businesses. On the one side are the big banks like Bank of America, which can offer interest rates at or close to prime, because they lend against a diverse portfolio. On the other are specialist lenders, who lend only against art. The latter, he said, have to offer interest rates much higher than the big banks.

This begs the question: If the art lending arms of big banks are trumping industry estimates as collectors seek liquidity without selling their works in a slow art market, are the specialty art lenders also riding this wave?

The London-based Fine Art Group has been offering loans solely against artworks for more than 20 years; according to CEO Philip Hoffman, it currently has a loan book close to $200 million, with an upper limit of $800 million. But he conceded that current interest rates—and his firm’s need to make a margin of 4 to 6 percent over that—means that lending “isn’t cheap at the moment.”

“If you think art prices are going to go up by 20 to 50 percent over the next three or four years, from a low right now, borrowing against your art does make sense if you don’t want to sell it and you need some financing,” Hoffman told ARTnews. “On the horizon, interest rates probably come down a percent or two over the next year and a half. I think a lot of people are underleveraged on art or have no leverage.”

Adam Chinn, the former COO of Sotheby’s and now a managing partner at specialist art lender International Art Finance (IAF), told ARTnews that since IAF was launched in 2023, the business has put out $180 million in loans with “significant demand” for more. By the end of the year, he said he expects IAF’s book to be nearer $200 million.

“Obviously, interest rates are high compared to where they were four years ago, but the art business is—and always has been—significantly undercapitalized,” he said. “There’s huge opportunity for art lenders at the moment. A lot of our business is with the dealer/gallery community and they don’t really have access to capital. Historically, the way dealers have raised money is, they’ve gone to someone who has put up the money—but they’ve given up 50 percent of their profit to the funder.”

The other major players in the art lending business are those run by the auction houses—Christie’s Art Finance and Sotheby’s Financial Services (SFS). SFS’s global head of lending, Scott Milleisen, told ARTnews that its loan book has doubled from $800 million to $1.6 billion since 2021. (Credit rating agency Morningstar DBRS confirmed the latter figure.) While Christie’s declined to comment about its business, it has publicly said it offers art-backed loans starting at $1 million. An employee at a major art lender familiar with Christie’s Art Finance said its business is doing “very well” and estimated its loan book to be “about $500 million.” However, one art financier told ARTnews that Christie’s scaled back on its art lending in 2008 “because the market imploded,” and now uses lending as a means to secure consignments for auction.

Hoffman claimed that his firm, as well as Christie’s Art Finance and SFS, are all currently lending at about 10 percent of their potential—and of where they should be in five to eight years’ time. While Milleisen dodged that question, he did say he believes SFS can double the size of its loan book again over the next few years, particularly with interest rates expected to drop further. He added that he thinks the art lending business will heat up even more when the art market picks up and prices start to rise again.

“You need to consider the context of the overall market—Deloitte estimates the lending market to be worth around $30 billion, so I measure success by taking share of this figure,” he said. “We are creating a new paradigm at SFS by offering large loans of $100 million or more backed solely by the value of art. That has never been done before. To go from $1.5 billion to $3 billion is totally achievable.”

In April SFS began offering securities backed by art and collectibles-secured loans for the first time. The $700 million offering has brought the total funding capacity of SFS to $2 billion.

Still, despite the positive buzz around the art lending business, not everyone is buying the swollen loan book narrative.

Jan Prasens, the former managing director of SFS and principal of JP Art & Finance Advisory, which matches art collectors with financing partners, told ARTnews that specialty art lenders aren’t always willing to disclose the true size of their loan books. He cautioned that some lenders are putting their own capital at risk, while others are merely acting like agents for outside investors.

Meghan Carleton, a managing partner at US-based, privately owned specialty art lender AOI Advisors, also said loan book figures should be taken with a big pinch of salt. Alessandro Fiorotto, Christie’s former regional managing director of art finance for EMEA and managing director of AF Advisory, told ARTnews that he’s skeptical of claims that the specialty art lending business is thriving. He said the market has become “increasingly saturated with lenders.”

“If you want a $30 million or $50 million loan, collectors are smart enough to shop around—they’ll go to Christie’s and Sotheby’s and find out who is offering the best rate,” he said. “The reality is that the auction houses can lend at a much cheaper rate than [specialty lenders], so they’re rarely going to get those types of big deals. They can’t offer the kind of sweeteners that the auction houses can offer, and they can’t lend at the same rate. They win very few [of these deals]. Independent lenders often like to talk about the value of being independent from the auction houses, but in reality any significant collector in the art world has bought or sold a piece through Christie’s or Sotheby’s, so they already have a relationship with them and they’re going to transact with them in the future.”

As a result, Fiorotto said independent specialist art lenders are left competing for the loans Christie’s and Sotheby’s don’t want, which he said are often “distressed,” “small,” or “carry higher risk.” “While they’re still able to provide loans, I think we’ll start to see a consolidation in the market,” he added.

While Prasens agreed that the market is likely saturated, he said specialty lenders are often the preferred lender for collectors, as many like to keep sale and purchase transactions separate and free of the exclusivity restrictions that an auction house might require in a contract.

“Others like to look at it more holistically and may not mind certain restrictions if it fits their ultimate exit strategy for the collateral,” Prasens said. “Auction houses are uniquely positioned to put in place incentive structures that may reduce the ultimate cost of the loan for the client. This is not so different from how private banks are able to provide low-cost financing on the back of other services they engage their clients with.”

As for Athena Art Finance, while its parent company, Yieldstreet, recently went through a round of layoffs, Athena CEO Rebecca Fine told ARTnews that Athena is “thriving” and has seen 45 percent growth so far in 2024. She said Athena has originated more than $850 million in art loans.

Fine added that Athena’s main competition is not specialty art lenders but the auction houses and, increasingly, private banks that are pulling back from noncore lending operations.

“Athena’s independence is a big competitive advantage because our clients have zero pressure to consign or sell, and when and if they do decide to sell, they can put the auction houses and galleries in competition to achieve the best terms,” she said.

Stephan Ludwig, co-CEO of advisory firm Gurr Johns, told ARTnews that he thinks the specialty art lending business is far from saturated and that the market has adjusted to higher interest rates.

“A lot of our borrowers are borrowing the money to leverage their assets to reinvest in higher yielding assets,” he said. “If you’re looking at a private equity investment that’s going to return 25 percent, paying at 11 percent for the loan, you’ve still got a good margin on that. It’s a very sexy part of the market.”

With art fair season in full swing and the all-important November auctions fast approaching, art lenders will only receive more inquiries, according to Naomi Baigell, the former managing director of Australian specialty art lender TPC Finance.

“People are starting to figure out how to best manage their portfolios—art lending comes into that conversation,” she told ARTnews. “Many collectors take a loan from a specialty art lender rather than an auction house, which might want to capture the collateral artwork for a future consignment, or a bank that typically takes a long time to facilitate a loan. If you know you have capital in your back pocket and you know you’re going to negotiate with a gallery at an art fair, for example, you can do that quite effectively if you can give them cash in hand, and if you have the resources to buy X, Y, and Z. This is a huge advantage.”

The Federal Reserve cut interest rates by half a percentage point on Wednesday, signaling that it is shifting focus from battling inflation to safeguarding the job market. The cut will likely have major implications for the larger economy, but as for the art market, experts say the move is unlikely to be enough to ease fears and cautious spending.

The reduction, which brings rates down to about 4.9 percent, follows months of slowing inflation and is intended to prevent the economy from weakening too much and to stop further job losses, according to the New York Times.

“I think it’s a move in the right direction,” Philip Hoffman, the founder of The Fine Art Group, told ARTnews. “But I don’t think until rates come down by one to two percent that we will see much correction on the market.” Hoffman called the forthcoming auction season a “chicken and egg” situation in which the sales are too small to entice buyers and interest rates still too high for sellers to consider letting go of their best works. “Everyone is still waiting,” he said. “There’s an election coming and people want to see what who will take over and what the tax situation will be. No one right now is interested in testing the market.”

Officials and market watchers expect further cuts, possibly another half-point reduction by year-end, as they aim to maintain economic stability. Despite some concerns, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell expressed confidence in the Fed’s progress toward lowering inflation without causing significant economic disruption, with hopes for a “soft landing” that avoids recession.

Drew Watson, head of art services with Bank of America Private Bank, called the rate cut “a signal that we may be approaching the end of a broader trend of increasingly high interest rates.” He added that historically the art market tends to perform more positively in periods with lower interest. It’s notable too, he said, that collectors will have more liquidity with the lower rates, which may pique the interest and strengthen the backbone of cosigners who have been holding back their best works during an economically slow period in the market.

Patti Wong, the woman credited with radically transforming Sotheby’s operations in Asia before she left in December, will launch her own advisory firm. Set to work with her on it is Fine Art Group, an influential advisory firm led by Philip Hoffman that will partner with Wong to expand its reach to Asia.

Before Wong’s departure from her post as international chairman last month, she had been at Sotheby’s for almost three decades. There, she built the house’s Hong Kong business from a small outpost to a hub that now rivals New York and London, with $1 billion in sales last year.

Wong is teaming up with another Sotheby’s veteran, Daryl Wickstrom, who most recently oversaw luxury sales before leaving the house after two decades in 2016. The firm’s focus will span Wong and Wickstrom’s respective specialties: modern and contemporary art, and luxury collectibles like jewelry and watches. Lisa Chow, another former Sotheby’s senior staffer, will join the firm as managing director.

In a statement, Wong said that as collectors in the region continue to grow their art holdings, there is an increasing need for the kinds of art advisories that have long been prevalent in Western capitals. Hoffman, a former Christie’s executive, views the partnership as one that will allow the two firms to add value for top collectors in Asia.

Last year, Hoffman recently announced a partnership with art adviser Allan Schwartzman, also formerly of Sotheby’s, as part of his strategy in the United States in March of last year. A year before that, Fine Art Group had acquired the U.S.-based art advisory firm Pall Mall, in what some saw as a sign of consolidation in the art market.

Wong’s clients are primarily based in Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, and various Southeast Asian countries, and her firm will continue to operate independently from Hoffman’s and Schwartzmann’s, which are based in London and New York, respectively. “Effectively, clients will have access to the resources of what we do in Europe, America, and Asia,” Hoffman said in an interview with ARTnews.

Hoffman’s firm, which focuses on family wealth management and art financing, will provide capital from the $800 million fund it oversees to back Wong’s art lending services for her clients. The two advisors will also partner on sourcing works for private deals between collectors.

Wong’s venture into the advisory alliance follows a shake-up at Sotheby’s regional headquarters that has seen an exodus of multiple dealmakers who built the Hong Kong franchise. Last year, Sotheby’s rainmaker Yuki Terase left the outpost in July. Terase later teamed up with Amy Cappellazzo, a market giant who formerly served as chairman of Sotheby’s, to start an advisory firm with a focus on New York and Asia clients.

Meanwhile, two New York contemporary specialists were moved to Hong Kong to run those sales in Terase’s place. This shift followed the appointment of Nathan Drahi, the son of Sotheby’s owner Patrick Drahi, as Asia’s managing director, a move that coincided with the departure of the house’s longtime Asia CEO Kevin Ching.

Wong left Sotheby’s at a time when auction players were placing increased attention on other hubs across Asia. The Korean and Singaporean markets are on the rise, and the latter is being seen as a hub for art sales across Southeast Asia, reaching Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, and Malaysia. Art SG, a long-awaited art fair, is launching in Singapore this week. Meanwhile, Hong Kong is mainland China’s hub, where a large base of buying power is located.

Describing Wong as the art market’s “best player” in the region, Hoffman seemed to suggest that the market in Southeast Asia will only continue to expand. “The whole team is going to be working to create a powerhouse on the art advisory side,” he said.

Last week, in the lead-up to this year’s Art Basel, ARTnews sat down with two art world veterans to talk about the state of the art market on the eve of its most important fair. 

Allan Schwartzman is an art advisor and founder of Schwartzman & Associates; Philip Hoffman is founder of The Fine Art Group.

The Fine Art Group is a 20-year-old London-based firm. When Hoffman founded the company, it was one of the first art investment businesses of its kind. He expanded it into an advisory firm and, more recently, into art financing.

Schwartzman & Associates is a multifaceted advisory business started by Schwartzman in 2020 after he parted ways with Sotheby’s, which had acquired his previous firm AAP (a partnership with former auction house executive Amy Cappellazzo and investment banker Adam Chinn) for $85 million.

Hoffman and Schwartzman announced in March that the two companies will work together on multiple aspects of their dealings.

We met in Schwartzman’s art-filled New York offices.

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

ARTnews: Let’s talk about what the art market looks like right now as we go into Art Basel. This is a moment of incredible upheaval—the markets, crypto, the war in Ukraine, the January 6th hearings, inflation, the threat of a recession. A gallery director told me that dealers are trying to sell whatever artworks they have on consignment because they are worried that the fall is going to be shaky. 

Allan Schwartzman: There is upheaval in our world in every way. And it is a corollary in the art world that the market’s gone haywire, particularly for the work of young artists. 

It’s hard to talk about the market monolithically, of course. So we’ve got to talk about the blue-chip market and the emerging market and also talk about auctions. We tend to only hear about auctions. We sometimes forget that auctions are roughly 10 percent of the art market. 

During this last round of auctions [in May], we saw at the upper end of the market there is a great appetite for the most extraordinary examples of artists’ work. Works at the mid-level by the same artists have become increasingly difficult to sell, regardless of how far down they’re discounted. 

You have more people who have the funds and the eyes to only collect the best. And that’s all that they’re interested in. And there is a healthy amount of trading at that level. 

For many of the more expensive works, particularly those for which there are pre-sale guarantees, there’s already been significant negotiation starting at one price level, and then going higher and higher. In the competition between the auction houses for the property and also—in many cases—in the vetting of potential backers for those guarantees. So in a sense, by the time you get to the public auction, that work has already been brought up to its maximum value. 

The lesson we’ve been learning for a number of years now at the highest level auctions is that most buyers go into that very informed. Regardless of where you place the estimate, people know what they’re willing to pay and they simply don’t get carried away. 

What about these extraordinary prices we are seeing for young and emerging artists?

Schwartzman: In the last few years, coinciding roughly with Covid and with the upheaval in museums and with shifts in what it is that people are looking at within the realm of contemporary art, there’s been a massive emergence of a significant number of very compelling young artists. 

Five years ago, emerging artists were being introduced at a kind of already mid-level price for an emerging artist; many of these artists have been first introduced to the market at $4,000 to $8,000. So it makes someone more open to having a wide appetite to cast a wider net in what one’s prepared, comfortable, or interested in looking at. 

Now, having said this, the vast majority of the people who are collecting art have been sitting at home for 2+ years. They have more time to be looking and spending money. And many people at the high end of the economy have been earning more money in this time period. So there has consequently been the emergence of a much, much larger market for the work of emerging artists. The demand has gotten so beyond the capacity of a natural supply to fulfill it that it really has set the market haywire. There are more collectors. 

For a gallery, the notion of who you prioritize to get work to is thrown askew because there are that many people who are serious about collecting new work. We’ve seen for a variety of reasons, especially related to this increase in demand, there has been a much more rapid activation of a resale market for such artists’ works. An artist whose work was selling for $75,000 one year and brings $800,000 at auction six months later or sells at auction for $3 million two years later. There’s no precedent for that. And the number of artists for which these prices are being achieved, it’s off the charts. 

You have artists going into Phillips day sale with an estimate of $10,000 selling for $400,000. 

Schwartzman: It is my understanding that the buyers are serious collectors. These are not primarily speculators. They are very new to the market. They know what they want and they’re used to instant gratification. And they are of such levels of wealth that $100,000, $3 million, $30,000—this is as much a commentary on the value of the dollar as it is the demand for art. 

Philip Hoffman: Allan, do you think that what we tend to see is that others who own the same artists suddenly think, well, I bought it for $30,000, maybe I can offload the same work for $1.4 million? And the auction houses are reluctant to try the second or third time so quickly because they don’t think they can follow through on the phenomenon. 

Schwartzman: Well, that’s always the question, isn’t it? When an artist goes from 0 to 1,000, or 0 to 4 million. What we’ve seen since the late ’80s is that when there is demand for an artist and collectors who cannot get access to the primary market, that when a major work shows up at auction, it ends up bringing an extraordinary price that’s often easily 20 times what the primary market price could be. Usually one or two sell at that very high level and then the price dips down in the resale market because the people at the front end who had an insatiable need to fulfill that interest have already fulfilled. It raises the prices for that artist to a much higher level, but it then tapers down to where a wider market can reach it. Controlling the supply is the greatest challenge that dealers and auction houses are facing.

Hoffman: So now you see all the dealers putting in 5-year non-resale clauses. 

Which can’t really be enforced— 

Hoffman: They’re not enforceable, but gallerists try really hard. Then they also put huge pressure on anybody that does want to sell it. We’ve seen it with clients who bought things, then had to sell. They were building collections and the gallery is completely mad and you don’t have control and you can’t say, “Well, that guy can’t ever sell.” It’s up to them today. They will go into it saying they’re not going to, but then financial circumstances change. Dealers will also imply that if you want to buy anything else from the gallery, you’ve then got to sell the piece back through the gallery. So it doesn’t go to auction.  

Schwartzman: I don’t think I could count, at the moment, how many first-time exhibitions of promising young artists have sold out before they’ve opened. The appetite and the speed of awareness is so rapid. There’s very little of that material that’s going to make it to the art fair. 

Philip, in terms of what’s been happening with your business in the recent weeks, let’s say, including the auctions and since the auctions, what kind of mood are we in? 

Hoffman: What’s weird is that the stock market was in turmoil. There’s inflation and everybody is worrying. But I just had someone on my team tell me that one of the major pieces that we’ve got in Basel in the multimillion-dollar category pre-sold at a big price. 

Our clients are really worried about inflation and they’re looking at all the possibilities of what’s going to happen, what they should put their money in, rather than having it in the bank or in the stock market. I’d say probably 25 percent of them are thinking, you know, blue chip art—I can enjoy it. I can make money out of it. And if I have a smart advisor like Allan or myself, we get it right and go into the right things. So there has been a big appetite for buying. 

Our clients were incredibly active with the auctions. In some cases, we told them they might have to pay double or triple the estimate. But there is a real appetite for great pieces. I think Basel will be very active at the top end. The great pieces will sell off the walls in 24 hours or less. Some of these dealers in Europe haven’t had any Americans coming over to them. So they’ve said, “Look, we have great things. The auction houses have managed to ship pictures around the world and get their local person to go and sell it for them. The galleries and some of the smaller dealers haven’t been able to do that.”

Schwartzman: Phillip, given the increase in the appetite for blue-chip work at the highest level of each artist’s production, do you see the market widening its definition of blue-chip? Do you see more artists being brought into that level of collecting? 

Hoffman: Two or three artists creep into the blue-chip every year. But it’s still pretty rarefied. We’re going to be out there raising large amounts of money for buying art as a potential inflation hedge for the investment side of things. These are people who want to borrow money to buy more art. And then there’s a huge growth in philanthropy and art gifting. Collectors who want to buy the greatest things and then be known to have given them to institutions. 

At Basel, the blue-chip art is on the first floor, emerging on the second. 

Schwartzman: But there are a good number of galleries on the first floor that have become increasingly focused on the work on primary market materials. So you have a lot of second floor activity on the first floor. I am aware of a few situations where galleries that were invited to go to the first floor declined the invitation. 

It’s true that the more crowded a VIP opening gets, the slower it is that most people get to the second floor except for those who begin on the second floor, given that what’s on the second floor is virtually all or mostly all primary market material. If you’re active in the market, you’ve already had access to those artists. You’re not bound by timing. 

But the heart of the galleries on the second floor are mature galleries that have been around for several decades, and they may not be the biggest names, but there are some very significant galleries upstairs and there are some smaller-scale galleries that have very healthy, long histories within the art market. In many of these are dealers who are functioning in a part of the middle market that has been challenged. As you say, there are equally as many galleries—at least from my experience—there are a lot of galleries in that middle market that are doing extraordinarily well and have found ways to adapt … but these are mostly very established galleries that have been around for quite some time. They’re showing, for the most part, artists that they have represented for a very long time. Also at the same time, we’ve seen a greater increase in the number of artists added to these galleries over the last few years than in previous years. And that is about a shift in taste and a shift in demand. 

I’m assuming we won’t see a huge number of collectors from Asia.  

Hoffman: One of our biggest Asian clients is coming over. We have one very big Chinese client who really wanted to get out and was excited because they booked on the first plane out of China to find out that the visa office can’t cope with the processing of visas. There’ll be a real struggle for many people to come from China, but I think we’ll see a few more from Hong Kong. 

In recent years it’s been the middle market that has struggled. Is that still where the struggle is? 

Schwartzman: The middle market grew so much that it was anything that wasn’t blue-chip or emerging. But many galleries have found that some of the artists they’ve represented for a long time, or ones they’ve added to the gallery in recent years, have seen great increases in demand. I think that there are many more galleries that have survived a period in which many thought that their survival was threatened. Yes, there are still many galleries in the middle market whose survival is threatened. But it’s not monolithic like it was before. Still, when galleries lose their top artists, it really does create a fragile situation. 

Artists don’t always benefit from a market rise. 

Schwartzman: I’m very happy whenever artists can make money. Even if the behaviors of the market are askew from the perspective of quality and significance. And yet we’ve seen many instances where artists have gone from very hot to very not. And that’s not just a phenomenon of the market of recent decades. All shifts in taste result in casualties. 

Most artists I know have a resilience, and their commitment to making art exceeds the interest of the market in supporting them. So while we may have a much more fattened market of artists who are driven by the fact that there is a market out there for them, I think the heart and soul of what keeps this system alive and healthy is the work of serious artists, some of whom become very successful and some of whom don’t.