In 2019, when Charles Stwart was named CEO of Sotheby’s, he knew 2020 was going to be a year of big changes. But he got more change than expected, when, due to restrictions around the coronavirus pandemic that began in March, his first full auction season faced a global shut down. Yet when your mission is to continue to move a 276-year-old company into the digital future, more change is probably better than less. For the auction house, the pandemic’s silver lining has been the rapid change forced upon the international art market.

“The longer the current lockdowns and restrictions remain, the weaker the pre-Covid habits become,” said Stewart, seated in a back hallway at the houses’s York Avenue headquarters behind the exhibition for the upcoming blockbuster Old Masters evening sale, in an interview. “It’s not at all clear to me that everything snaps back.”

No one is suggesting that last year was easy. Sotheby’s took the lead with their auction format creating a livestream sale that featured their specialists as the main characters in the bidding drama. “We keep coming back to the idea that at the heart of the company is the expertise,” Stewart says. “It’s what differentiates from any kind of digital only platform. We don’t do enough to showcase the specialists. You have to be in the know to have the access and awareness to know who they are and why you should speak to them.”

The livestream sales were the most visible side of the auction house’s response to the pandemic. But it wasn’t the only one. And the advent of mass vaccination has Stewart looking toward 2021 to consolidate his company’s embrace of ongoing change.

“There was this period of massive adaptation,” Stewart said. “This year is different. Now we know. We know we can operate basically in a fully remote environment. This year, it is a question of looking at the adaption and asking which portions of that were really innovative—which do we want to make strategic and which were just us trying to cope in the moment.”

With all of that in mind, Stewart decided to poll his leadership team—and his employees—for their ideas about the future of the art market. They came up with eight predictions for 2021. If 2020 taught us anything, these predictions are probably more indicative of Sotheby’s thinking about their business than they are literal prognostications. Either way, they are a window into what a major auction house’s internal deliberations are like.

Sotheby’s Predictions for 2021:

New sites and bespoke events:

• The art world is pining for in-person communication and a change of scenery. There will be a reinterpretation or reimagining of physical experiences once those can be held safely again and we’ll see a lasting resistance to large-scale events and greater demand for exclusive, high quality in-person events with an immersive digital component. Further, there will be a greater focus on presenting art in unique and innovative locations, and in a way that takes advantage of public spaces and virtual networks outside of the establishment.

Virtual audiences to expand:

• The audience for buyers will continue to expand in 2021 as rapid technological transformation and the embrace of digital channels will remain ever present. The comprehensive set of digital tools clients can now access has not only broken down barriers to entry, but reduced the need to view or physically handle works in person prior to purchasing. As a result, the average number of times that a work is seen will exponentially multiply.

A new emphasis on sustainability:

• The art world will continue to make significant strides in advancing sustainability initiatives and reducing its carbon footprint. From eliminating printed catalogues, invites, crates and excess packaging in art shipping and handling, to rethinking the need for international air travel for art fairs and exhibitions, there will be a greater consensus about how to reduce waste and incorporate more sustainable practices. In doing so, there will also be a shift in how art itself reflects the growing concerns of our ecological crisis, and the types of art collectors are interested in.

Local will be the new global:

• Driven by pandemic travel restrictions, local will be the new global. Having unavoidably spent much more time than usual in their hometowns and areas, many people have come to appreciate more acutely the sense of regional identity that was increasingly lost with globalization. This will mean that local styles and movements will become more pronounced and revered and will impact how and what auction houses and galleries choose to exhibit, as well as heighten the importance of local museums as people rediscover their local regions.

Hybrid auctions will replace old model:

• Following the continued rise of cross-category collecting in 2020, which offered contemporary art alongside cars and design objects, auctions featuring property from various departments will continue and increase in volume in 2021. Similar to museum exhibitions, more auctions will be contextualized by era or a specific theme rather than by a singular department.

Market players will consolidate:

• The distinctions between art fairs, galleries, and auction houses will continue to blur in 2021 as the primary and secondary markets converge at an even greater scale than last year. Building upon the barriers that were broken down in 2020, market players will experience reconfiguration due to information consolidating and being widely available.

The Asian market will continue to rise:

• The strength of the market in Asia saw a step change in 2020, with a steady influx of new, younger buyers and a radically expanded buyer base with greater cross-category participation. This will continue in 2021. The demand for works by Western and emerging artists will continue to rise as well as a strong continued appreciation for classical works and luxury.

African art hubs will be new attractions:

• The number of buzzworthy artist-driven projects throughout Africa, coupled with the recent excitement for figurative paintings by young artists of the continent’s diaspora, will segue into a greater interest in African art and art history, which will be enhanced by the continent’s ability to participate digitally at a greater scale than physically within the market. Once it is safe to travel again, various hubs in Africa are gearing up as burgeoning destinations for the arts—among them established cities like Cape Town, as well as others such as Lagos and Benin City, where new world-class institutions are being built.

Christie’s released this morning preliminary sales figures for the fraught auction year of 2020 now closing. Despite the widespread closure of sales rooms around the globe, the house was able to make £3.4 billion ($4.4 billion) in auction sales, a drop of 27% from the previous year. In any other year, these figures might be viewed as a sign of weakness in the art market or the secondary market for luxury items. This year, the numbers will come as a sign of unexpected strength with more constraints on supply seemingly than demand.

To offset the lost sales caused by the disrupted live auction calendar, Christie’s relied upon 200 online-only sales that made up 10% of the volume. The auction house was also able to increase private sales to a projected £987 million  ($1.3 billion) which racked up a 57% increase compared to 2019. Christie’s noted that it was able to sell more works above $25 million through private sales than at auction. Previously the house told reporters that it had sold three works above $100 million in private transactions.

Some additional figures cited by Christie’s in the release were that 36% of all buyers were new to Christie’s in 2020, with many engaging with the auction house through online-only sales. Among those buyers, 32% are millennials (23-38 years old.) Further geographical breakdowns were that 34% of global spend in auction sales went to buyers in Asia, well-balanced by Americas (33%) and EMEA (33%.)

The house also mentioned in its release that “of the top prices achieved at Christie’s this year for works by living artists under 45, 9 out of 10 were sold in our Hong Kong saleroom. Closing with a positive outlook for 2021 based on the fact that the second half of 2020 saw 25% growth in sales compared to H2 2019.

Sotheby’s released some preliminary sales figures for the difficult year of 2020, when much of the auction business had to adapt to the closure of live in-person auctions and the invention of hybrid-style live-stream sales as well as expanded online auctions. In 2020, with still a few sales left to go in the season, Sotheby’s is claiming the house generated $3.5 billion in auction sales. That’s substantial drop of 27 percent from last year’s $4.8 billion auction total. But considering the disruption the industry faced, this is still a sign of remarkable health for the broader industry. The results are encouraging for a company that touts its desire and ability to innovate. On top of that $3.5 billion in auction sales, there was an additional $1.5 billion in private sales, the house said, amounting to a total of $5 billion.

The auction house said 15 percent of the $3.5 billion in sales came from online auctions although those events made up 70 percent of the firm’s number of sales. (The auction business skews toward the high-end sales when it comes to totals.) Sotheby’s took the opportunity of the release to continue to push the idea that the future of the auction business lies in digital innovation: “new web and mobile experiences removed friction from registering and bidding, resulting in 80% of all bids placed online,” the company said in its release. “Over 40% of bidders and buyers in online auctions are new to Sotheby’s, and number of buyers under the age of 40 doubled this year.”

Private sales, previously a strong suit for Sotheby’s, benefited from the auction rooms being shuttered by the pandemic. Negotiated sales for private clients rose by 50 percent to $1.5 billion in 2020, offsetting some of the lost open outcry sales caused by the pandemic cancelations.

Sotheby’s release also made much of their growing Asian business. Auction sales in the region reached $932 million. Worldwide, Asian collectors accounted for 30 percent of the sales. Buyers from the region won nine of the top 20 lots and bid on half of them. The “number of Asian clients bidding online is growing faster than anywhere else in the world,” the release said, “more than doubling in 2020.”

Deaccessioning, as the Baltimore Museum of Art just discovered when it was forced to withdraw works from sale at Sotheby’s in late October, has its perils. The Brooklyn Museum was able to sell works in the same sale that BMA had to abandon. Sometimes the difference between a scandal and success is planning and advice. At least, that’s what a new team of experienced lawyers and public relations people are betting as they launch a new service for museums.

In February of this year, Jon Olsoff, John Cahill and Paul Cossu announced the formation of a new law firm (OCC) catering to the art world. The lawyers at OCC have decades of experience working with institutions as they picked their way through the complex issues associated with these kinds of sales, both at auction and privately.

Now they’ve enlisted the help of Sotheby’s former communications head, Lauren Gioia, who will lend her 20+ years expertise as a consultant to OCC. During her time at Sotheby’s, Gioia led the communications strategies for the largest and many of the most complicated deaccessions in history.  Gioia and OCC are pooling their wealth of knowledge, experience and specific expertise—they’ve worked on a range of deaccessioning events at City of Denver/Clyfford Still Museum (2011), SF MoMA (2019), Georgia O’Keeffe Museum (2014, 2018), Dia Art Foundation (2013), MFA Boston (2003, 2011), New York Public Library (2005), Albright-Knox Art Gallery (2007), Berkshire Museum (2017/2018)—to provide integrated communications and legal counsel to museums and cultural institutions embarking on deaccessions and sales.

“Most museums have very capable communications and legal counsel,” Gioia said, “but deaccessions and sales require specific expertise and experience that we can provide.  Our role would be to partner with the existing teams to ensure institutions achieve a successful outcome based on their goals.”