Art Market Monitor

Global Coverage ~ Unique Analysis

  • AMMpro
  • AMM Fantasy Collecting Game
  • Podcast
  • Contact Us

Clare McAndrew’s UBS Report Says Gallery Sales Down 36% Due to Pandemic

September 9, 2020 by Angelica Villa

Art Basel Miami Beach 2019 © Art Basel

Although all three editions of Art Basel have been canceled this year because of the pandemic, the fair has released its first mid-year UBS Global Art Market Report. The report, written in partnership with art economist Clare McAndrew, suggests that Covid-19 has significantly impacted the market—though not always in negative ways.

According to the report, sales have dropped overall across the global gallery sector since the pandemic began six months ago. But high net worth collectors that were surveyed for the report said they were more interested in collecting in spite of all this, and the online sector is growing as auction houses and galleries have moved their offerings digital.

The report also issues predictions for the future of the global economy. Claiming that pandemics tend to drive “xenophobia, populism, and protectionism,” the report envisions that markets across various industries will become less global.

The survey used data from 795 galleries and analyzed the collecting habits of 360 high-net-worth individuals across the U.S, the U.K., Europe, and Asia. According to the report, galleries reported sales have fallen by 36 percent in the first half of 2020, compared to the equivalent period in 2019, though the report does not provide an estimated total. According to their annual report published in February, sales in dealer sector were estimated to have reached $36.8 billion in 2019.

The gallery sector has been hit hard by the contraction in sales volume, leading to staff furloughs and layoffs at enterprises of all sizes. Of the dealers surveyed, one third reported staff downsizing. Smaller galleries with annual turnover between $250,000 and $500,000 saw the largest share of staff cuts, with roughly 38 percent reporting that they had shrunk their workforces.Continue Reading

Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert Brings British Pop to Basel

June 8, 2018 by Marion Maneker

At Art Basel, Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert has a Gerald Laing Ben Day work on offer for £550k. Navy Pilot from 1963 is an image taken from an American magazine of the time. Laing made the work as the first picture he painted on his 1963 trip to the US. Laing was staying in Robert Indiana’s Coenties Slip studio. The This was also the first time Laing combined flat primary color with the half-tone Ben-Day dots.

Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert also has Eduoardo Paolozzi’s Collage (1948) which is on offer for £380k, an important both for its early date and for its scale. It is a finished exhibition piece, intended as a collage, though many of Paolozzi’s collages are smaller in scale and were meant as studies for other works.

Here’s Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert’s press release:

Continue Reading

Gorky, Mitchell Lead Hauser + Wirth Art Basel Stand

June 6, 2018 by Marion Maneker

Hauser + Wirth has released its packing list for Art Basel ahead of next week’s fair. The dealers will set up in booth D10 where works by Joan Mitchell, Composition (1969), above, will be on display. This example from her Sunflower series has a $14m asking price. It will hang alongside Louise Bourgeois‘s Three Graces from 1947 which has a $4.75m asking price. Arshile Gorky‘s 1929 still life is on offer for $8.5m

At the Unlimited sector, Hauser & Wirth will present major, large-scale works and installations by Dan Graham, Rashid Johnson, Guillermo Kuitca,and Lygia Pape. At Parcours, Pierre Huyghe’s installation ‘Exomind (Deep Water)’ (2017) includes elements both living and inanimate, chaotic and confined; various flora and fauna comprise Huyghe’s environment, with a centerpiece a concrete cast of a Japanese sculpture.

Hauser + Wirth 2018 Art Basel Catalogue (Downloadable PDF)

Mnuchin Previews Sam Gilliam for Art Basel

June 1, 2018 by Marion Maneker

Mnuchin Gallery has sent out their packing list for Art Basel which opens in Basel in two weeks. Mnuchin can be found at Booth F9 with works by Mark Bradford, Willem de Kooning, David Hammons, Joan Mitchell, Pablo Picasso, Robert Ryman, Sean Scully, Frank Stella, Rudolf Stingel, and Cy Twombly. (Click here to download their packing list.)

Coinciding with Sam Gilliam’s retrospective at the Kunstmuseum Basel, the booth will feature a group of works by the artist, including a special presentation of the vintage Drape painting, Patch, 1970 (above). Last shown at the Museum of Modern Art in 1971, and in the same private collection since then, this work will be unveiled for the first time in almost five decades.

Art Fairs, Transfer Fees and Inequality in the Gallery World

April 30, 2018 by Marion Maneker

The art conference held by The New York Times in Berlin last week had some head-scratching moments. Some following the event on social media were curious to see the spouse of the conference host, an intellectual-property lawyer and consultant, on a panel debating virtual reality as an art form. But that was minor compared to the unexpected way in which an offhand comment by David Zwirner was blown up into a confused discussion of how to shore up the position of smaller galleries in the art market.

It is not clear that David Zwirner’s offer to pay more for his booths at art fairs was part of a premeditated strategy to deflect some of the frustration toward the growth of larger global galleries in the art market; or that, in making the offer, it would be treated as “breaking news” by the New York Times’s social media team or picked up by a number of other art market reporters as an important or significant offer.

What should have been a brief story turned into something else late on Friday when two stories appeared in the art press picking over the issue in ways that were probably counter-productive.Continue Reading

Next Page »
LiveArt

Want to get Art Market Monitor‘s posts sent to you in our email? Sign up below by clicking on the Subscribe button.

  • About Us/ Contact
  • Podcast
  • AMMpro
  • Newsletter
  • FAQ

twitterfacebooksoundcloud
Privacy Policy
Terms & Conditions
California Privacy Rights
Do Not Sell My Personal Information
Advertise on Art Market Monitor
 

Loading Comments...