Art Market Monitor

PBS’s Nightly Business Report delves into the art market. Echoing the reporting on the financial markets, some are suggesting a renewed risk trade in art. Whether that’s a real assessment or just a function of the media generating a story from random anecdotes remains to be seen:

YASTINE: For gallery owners it’s a little bit better too. There were plenty of buyers in the crowds returning to (INAUDIBLE) Miami Beach. Sales were up an estimated 15 percent. Lucy Mitchell-Innes sees the change in attitude among the people who visit her Manhattan galleries.

LUCY MITCHELL-INNES, DIRECTOR, MITCHELL-INNES & NASH: It’s not so much that the economy has completely rebounded. It’s that people have maybe adapted to it. And they also feel that they can now budget and work things out and also if you’re really devoted to collecting art, there’s only so long you’re going to sit on the sidelines before the temptation is just too great.

YASTINE: Of course, art is in the eye of the beholder. A Napoleonic Michael Jackson and sculptural commentaries on the SUV aren’t always on the top of everyone’s buy list. But collector and money manager Marshall Front says the fact that people are buying again is a good sign.

MARSHALL FRONT, CHMN., FRONT BARNETT ASSOCIATES LLC: It does give an indication I think that people are beginning to quote, come out of their shells unquote. You’ve seen it in the equity market. You’ve seen it in the junk bond market and now you’re seeing it the art market, collectibles, gold and so forth and so on. People are moving toward a riskier trade than they would have 10 months or a year ago.

Art Investments Are Getting Chic Again (Nightly Business Report)

Also of Interest:

• Homogenizing International Art
  Sarah Thorton went to Art Basel for The Economist and discovered a little bit of grousing about the homogenizing nature...
  
• Witt and Wisdom in the Art Trade
  Colin Gleadell illustrates the importance of the Witt library at the Courtauld Institute in this vignette of finds. The library...
  
• The China Trade
  The art market has relied on a type of reverse asset rotation to maintain its 21st Century levels. In financial...
  
• Armory Show: “Very Solid and Very Real”
  Kate Taylor reports from the opening of the Armory Show this afternoon: The Dow closed up 150 points, and the...
  
• The Art Swaps Market
  Daniel Grant, in the Maine Antique Digest, discusses the ways dealers and museums trade works to meet each other’s needs....