Sotheby’s Simon Shaw captures the mood with this take on the reaction to Trump’s surprise presidential win and how it might affect auction sales this week:

“Some people are very happy with this result and will feel richer and more inclined to buy art, and some people will feel destabilized by the unknown and still more inclined to buy art,” said Simon Shaw, Sotheby’s worldwide co-head of Impressionist and Modern art. “There’s a lot of demand out there.”

Trump’s victory has jolted the market for US Treasuries. Those instruments are used as a vehicle to park cash. Facing the prospect of a 30-year bull market in bonds coming to an end, wealthy buyers may prefer to store their ‘value’ in art—at least in the short term until that market finds its appropriate level.

Here’s the rest of Robin Pogrebin’s tour of the waterfront:

In the days before the sales, collectors, art advisers and auction specialists were pointing to encouraging signs, citing the postelection stock market highs, the post-“Brexit” London sales in June and Sotheby’s London auction of David Bowie’s art collection last week, which had a sell-through rate of 100 percent and set new top prices for 59 artists. […]

Yet history suggests that single events rarely affect sales, art experts say. “The market has been pretty impervious to just about every event with the exception of the global meltdown of 2008,” said Robert Manley, who recently became Phillips’s new co-head of 20th century & contemporary art after 16 years at Christie’s.

Donald B. Marron, a financier and longtime collector, said he expected the auctions to be largely business as usual. “Clearly this is a surprise and in one sense makes everybody cautious until they see how everything works,” Mr. Marron said. “On the other hand, if you want to judge by the markets, less regulation is seen as positive. My guess is, it will be like most auction seasons: good pictures will do well.”

The Art Market’s Reaction to Trump? Sales This Week Offer First Test  (The New York Times)