For a long time, the May auctions in New York have been a major indicator of the state and direction of the global art market. The verdict from the most recent season is not one of crisis, but of a deep and necessary change. The evening sales at Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Phillips looked promising on the surface, with fees included; the total for Impressionist, Modern, and Contemporary art sales reached just over USD 1 billion. This is a big number, but it’s not quite as high as the USD 1.1 billion in sales from the same time last year. It’s also a lot lower than the highs we’ve seen in the past. This same week of sales brought in $1.5 billion in 2023, and the peak of 2022 saw an amazing $2.4 billion as per The art market check.
This contraction marks a clear break from the fast-paced, post-pandemic times when records were broken all the time. The market is not falling apart; instead, it is entering a new phase where people are being careful, making smart decisions, and clearly dividing up their activities. Paul Donovan, the chief economist at UBS Global Wealth Management, says that “activity has slowed down from the rather frenzied pace we were seeing three years ago.” “It’s not too far off from what we’ve been seeing in the bigger economy.” This cooling is a logical reaction to a shaky macroeconomic environment, made worse by high interest rates that won’t go down and geopolitical uncertainty. This report will give a final check of the art market, looking at the macroeconomic factors that affect how collectors behave, the split of the market into high-end and high-volume segments, the rise of new power brokers, and the optimistic mood that is developing from important industry events. The data doesn’t show that the market is getting worse; instead, it shows that it is getting older, more strategic, and, in the end, more serious.
A Full Art Market Check: Dealing with Economic Headwinds and Changing Prices
You can’t understand the current state of the art market without looking at the bigger picture. It is a direct reflection of the economy as a whole. The main outside forces putting pressure on the economy are a shaky global economy and the fact that interest rates are still high, which makes capital more expensive and lowers speculative appetite. Paul Donovan of UBS calls this “an overlay of additional levels of uncertainty.” This includes the rise of economic nationalism and the possibility of new US trade tariffs. Donovan says that these factors may have “contributed at the margins” and are “something to keep monitoring.” However, their combined effect has made both buyers and sellers at the highest levels of the market very cautious.
Quantitative benchmarking for the New Normal
The quantitative data from the New York auctions, which are considered a bellwether, backs up this cautious feeling. The evening sale total of just over $1 billion is a big change from the market’s recent highs. It’s clear that the trend is going down: from $2.4 billion in 2022 to $1.5 billion in 2023, and then to $1.1 billion in 2024. The 2022 number was also inflated by unusual sales to a single owner, the most famous of which was the USD 1.5 billion auction of the Paul Allen collection in November of that year. It was a sale of only 61 works that showed how much value the market could handle before. So, the current totals show that activity has returned to a more normal level, like it was before the boom.
However, a more detailed examination reveals that the headline auction figures do not provide a complete picture. The most recent Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report gives important background information by showing that the market value and the number of transactions are not the same. The value of the global art market went down by 12% last year, but the number of transactions went up by 3%. This trend shows that it’s no longer enough to just look at the top-line auction revenue to check the art market. The table below brings together these important performance indicators, showing the changes in structure that are happening.
The most important structural insight into the current market is the fact that value is going down while volume is going up. The first thing to notice about falling auction totals is that the market is cooling down. But the information about the number of transactions needs a more in-depth look. The answer lies in how the market is made up. The contraction is mostly happening at the high-value, top-tier end, which has a bigger effect on the overall value metric. At the same time, activity at the lower end of the market is growing, which is causing the number of transactions to rise. Because of this, the art market is splitting into two ecosystems that are becoming more and more different from each other: a shrinking, high-value market that is cautious, and a growing, high-volume market that is easier to enter into. Using only evening sale totals to judge the health of the market is no longer a good or accurate way to do it.
The High-End Squeeze: A Time of Carefulness, Selectivity, and Carefully Chosen Stability
The recalibration is most evident at the top of the market, where eight- and nine-figure sales were common. There was a clear “high-end squeeze” during the most recent auction season, as collectors were very hesitant to buy trophy works at speculative prices. There were several high-profile failures that sent a “chill through the rest of the week.” The most famous was a 1950s Alberto Giacometti bust of his brother, which had a private estimate of USD 70 million but didn’t get any real bids at Sotheby’s. This public failure of a masterwork by a well-known artist demonstrated a lack of alignment between the seller and the market.
At Christie’s, where Andy Warhol’s important 1960s work “Big Electric Chair” was taken off the market before the sale, the mood was also tense. This choice, which has been called a “sensible decision,” is also very revealing. It shows that consignors and auction houses are now taking steps to reduce risk by not putting up works that don’t have guaranteed interest. They would rather avoid a public pass than test a weak market. This planned retreat from risk shows that people are now much more cautious than they were in the past when they were more willing to take risks.
The “Flight to Safety” and Curated Resilience
In this time of heightened selectivity, the works that did well show a clear collector psychology. There is a clear “flight to safety,” both in terms of the artist’s reputation and in terms of style. As one observer put it, “unchallenging, pretty even, perhaps an escape from too much reality,” many of the season’s successes were. For example, Claude Monet’s Peupliers au bord de l’Epte, crépuscule (1891) sold for a record USD 43 million at Christie’s, making it the most expensive painting in the artist’s “Poplars” series. Matthew Newton, an art advisor at UBS Family Solutions, says that this sale “shows that a good painting can set a record even in this environment.” Collectors are more interested in works that are beautiful, historically important, and unquestionably blue-chip, which are stable stores of value, than in works that are gritty, hard to understand, or have high estimates.
This selective success makes the market look stable overall, and high sell-through rates make it even more so. Iwan Wirth, who co-founded the huge gallery Hauser & Wirth, said that these rates were good, between 87% and 100%. But this number needs to be broken down. Wirth himself says that these rates are “to some extent manipulated” by the growing number of works that are sure to sell and the planned removal of pieces before the auction. This is very different from Wirth’s “very first auction, 33 years ago in May 1992,” when only 60% of items sold.
So, the high sell-through rates of today don’t mean that the market is strong everywhere; they just mean that the auction houses have effective ways to manage risk. This change suggests that public auctions are changing from simple places to find the best price to carefully planned and staged marketing events. The main goal is changing from getting the highest price possible to making sure the sale goes through, which will keep up the public appearance of confidence. Because of this, the public market is not really testing the market’s appetite for riskier, high-value material. This trend pushes real risk-taking and honest price negotiations into the less clear areas of private sales and gallery deals. This is why public and private market performance is becoming more and more different. Wirth’s description of the market as “resilient, yet recalibrated” perfectly sums up this new reality of curated stability.
New Power Brokers: Female Artists Are Getting More Popular, and Collectors Are Thinking More Realistically
Underlying macroeconomic trends and high-end market dynamics is a significant shift in society. This change is a major force in the market’s recalibration. The growing power of women as artists, sellers, and buyers is not just a social footnote; it is a major economic force that is changing the market into a more selective place.
Artists Who Break Records and Get Noticed in the Market
The recent auctions showed that the market is still very interested in female artists, as they set new records. Marlene Dumas’s Miss January (1997) was the most famous example. It sold for an amazing $13.6 million at Christie’s, setting a new auction record for a living female artist. The painting itself, which is almost three meters tall and shows a “strident lady nude,” shows that the market is accepting more than just decorative art by women. This trend goes beyond just one big star. Four modern female artists set new personal auction records at Phillips: Olga de Amaral (USD 1.2 million), Grace Hartigan (USD 1.6 million), Kiki Kogelnik (USD 355,600), and Ilana Savdie (USD 228,600). This wide range of success shows that there is a widespread and ongoing re-evaluation of female artists across generations and styles.
The Smarts of Female Buyers and Sellers
Women have just as much of an impact on the market when it comes to transactions. During the season, female sellers showed that they knew a lot about the market. Sotheby’s was able to sell the collections of two well-known dealers, Barbara Gladstone and Daniella Luxembourg, who have since passed away. Luxembourg’s approach is a wonderful example of the smart, strategic way of thinking that is now the key to success. Maria Nuda (1969), her Michelangelo Pistoletto work, sold for USD 3.4 million with fees, which was much more than the high estimate of USD 1.5 million. The transaction was a victory for patience and timing; Luxembourg bought the work in 2005 for about $668,000. “I am not a person who takes huge risks,” she expressed, encapsulating the current market mood. “Being more modest and realistic is a big virtue these days; you have to let the market decide.” She had gotten a guarantee for all of her works, which lowered the risk in a cautious climate.
The growing number of women buying things shows and strengthens this realistic way of thinking. Paul Donovan of UBS says that “women are taking more control over global wealth, and female entrepreneurship is on the rise.” His analysis of how women collect things is important: “Women are not more risk averse, but they do the research so they know the risks—they are less likely to spend USD 50m on one piece of art.” This research-driven approach, which prioritizes understanding risk over pure speculation, is exactly what a nervous market needs to establish a stable floor. The data backs the argument up. Sotheby’s says that 22% of its bidders so far this year have been women, up from 20% in 2024. Christie’s says that women’s bidding and buying are “consistently strong,” especially in the Asia-Pacific region and for luxury goods sales, where women made up 49% of bidders last year.
The fact that these trends are happening at the same time suggests that the rise of women’s market power is not just linked to the market’s recalibration; it is a cause. The way that female collectors and consignors work together—doing a lot of research, being patient, and being honest about value—is a strong counter to the speculative froth that characterized the market’s peak in 2022. The growing financial power of this group is helping to create the “soft landing” that experts are seeing. This trend shifts the market’s focus from high-risk investments to sustainable, knowledge-based asset stewardship.
The Volume Shift: A Look at “Creative Destruction” and Segment Divergence in the Art Market
The high-end part of the market is shrinking, but things are going differently in other parts of it. There is a big change happening in the structure of the market. Public and private sales are moving in different directions, and there is a lot more activity at lower price points. Matthew Newton of UBS came up with the term “creative destruction” to describe a process in which new, more efficient models make old ones useless. This approach is how we can understand this change.
The Great Divergence: Public Auctions vs. Private Sales
The Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report is the best proof of this change in structure. The data shows that the public auction market and the private sales sector are doing very different things. Last year, the total market value dropped by 12%, but this number hides two very different trends. Sales at public auctions fell by 25%, which was the worst hit by the slowdown in high-end sales. On the other hand, sales by dealers and galleries dropped by only 6%, which wasn’t as shocking.
The private sales divisions of the auction houses are even more revealing. These departments, which make deals in secret, saw their sales go up by 14%, which is the opposite of what was happening with their public-facing business, which was going down. The dynamics in the high-end public market are directly responsible for this shift in activity. As sellers of valuable works become less willing to take risks, they are more likely to choose private negotiations over the public auction block, where things can change quickly and the stakes are high. This structural de-risking is changing the most important business in a big way, including where and how it is done. This phenomenon means that there is more and more information asymmetry in the market. As more high-end deals happen behind closed doors, the public auction results become less reliable as a sign of the true health and direction of the top end. This makes insider knowledge and expert advice more valuable.
The lower market is growing and gaining new energy.
The “creative destruction” is most clear in the growth at the other end of the price range. The Art Basel and UBS report reveals that the auction market’s growth in both value and volume last year was limited to works sold for less than $5,000. The value of this segment went up by 7%, and the volume went up by 13%. This shows that even though the top of the pyramid is getting smaller, the base is getting bigger, which brings in new buyers and makes the market more democratic. A new, more stable model based on higher transaction volume at lower prices is challenging the old model, which relied on a few eight-figure, headline-grabbing sales.
Gallerists think this split reality will go on. Iwan Wirth says that the secondary market for mid-tier work is more like a “buyer’s market,” where there is a lot of supply and prices can be negotiated. He asserts that sellers at the top are still hesitant to reduce their price expectations, potentially resulting in a stalemate. But he does see clear areas of momentum in other places. There is still a lot of interest in certain younger artists up to $500,000, as well as in certain “contemporary masters.” This conclusion shows that even in the gallery business, activity is not the same everywhere but is focused on certain areas where quality is high and value propositions are strong.
The Way Ahead in a Market That Is Selective, Divided, and Serious
The 2025 art market check shows that the market is going through a big change. The time of uniform, crazy growth driven by low interest rates and speculative momentum is over for good. Instead, there is a market that is more complicated, divided, and picky. Following the herd is no longer enough for success; one must be able to navigate particular and subtle currents. The big drop at the top end of the market is balanced out by the growing power of a new, more research-driven collector base and a growing high-volume market at lower price points.
Daniella Luxembourg, a dealer, wisely pointed out that this time of change is a chance to “renew our beliefs and ethics, including in the art world.” Her belief that it’s time to “take a pause and be more serious” encapsulates the overall sentiment. This isn’t a call to be negative; it’s a call to focus on the basic ideas of what makes art valuable.
The mood at Art Basel, the most famous art fair in the world, gives us one last, cautiously hopeful sign. The pace of sales was slower than in boom years, but business was still done. Thaddaeus Ropac, an international gallerist, said that sales were steady on the first day. They ranged from a $60,000 work on paper to a $2.1 million painting by Georg Baselitz. His evaluation shows the way forward: “The fair is going better than we thought it would. The quality here is very high, and that’s what people come for.”
When the market is cautious, quality, origin, and substance become the most important things. The art market in 2025 is not weaker; it is smarter. “Creative destruction” is getting rid of the speculative froth and making room for a more mature, knowledge-based ecosystem. Artists, collectors, gallerists, and advisors who embrace the virtues of this new paradigm—realism, deep research, strategic patience, and an eternal dedication to quality—will be the ones who do well in this new environment. The market has changed, and it is now heading toward a future that is more stable and, in the end, more serious.
Leave a Reply