The FT has a compendium of the well-worn discussion around art world opacity. But the article opens with a lament from Clare McAndrew who puts together TEFAF’s widely cited report on the volume of public and private transactions in the art world.

What’s at issue, though, is whether anyone has a good handle on the private art market. The implication of the FT’s take is that world’s biggest galleries are not cooperating with McAndrew:

“There were huge steps towards greater transparency in the past 20 years,” said Clare McAndrew, author of the TEFAF Art Market report. “But in the past couple of years it has been going backwards.”

She blamed a trend at auction houses to sell art privately […]

To compile the figures, she relied in part on a survey of galleries. For this year’s report, only 800 galleries out of 6,300 responded, though she had some private conversations with others. “It was a struggle,” she said.

Art market ripe for abuse, say campaigners (FT.com)