Here Are 3 Trends That Show the Hong Kong Auction Market Is Booming for International Art

We examine three trend lines from the recent slate of Hong Kong sales to determine where the market is headed. Like a massive Companion balloon in Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, the mind-boggling $14.8 million paid for a KAWSpainting in Hong Kong earlier this month upstaged every other result from Sotheby’s recent series of sales in the city. But […]

Seattle Art Fair Artistic Director Nato Thompson on How to Cut the Crap and Connect With an Audience

The Creative Time alum speaks with artnet News’s editor-in-chief Andrew Goldstein about the intersection of art and tech and how to add heft to art-fair programming. Nato Thompson has a knack for putting artists and other thinkers together in a way that gets people talking. He did this to great effect during his decade at […]

The End of Exhibitions? As Attendance Plummets, New York Dealers Are Scrambling to Secure the Future of the Art Gallery

To lure the public back into art galleries, dealers are banding together and adopting vintage tactics like the old-fashioned gallery walk. On Wednesday night in New York, 30 art galleries stayed open late to accommodate visitors to the inaugural Chelsea Art Walk, a new initiative spearheaded by the Art Dealers Association of America. It’s a “great […]

Team Gallery’s Jose Freire on Why He Is Quitting Art Fairs for Good – Part I

The veteran art dealer explains why he has soured on the art market’s central apparatus. The central driver of the modern-day art market, at least when it comes to galleries, is art fairs. They promise efficiency: for a hefty booth fee (plus travel and shipping costs), dealers from around the world can convene in a […]

Why Frieze Los Angeles Would Be Dead on Arrival (and Other Insights)

This week, our columnist draws on his LA gallery experience to chart the pitfalls of Frieze’s potential westward expansion. THE RUMOR On Thursday, Charlotte Burns and Allan Schwartzman reported in Art Agency, Partners’s “In Other Words” newsletter that “the Frieze Art Fair is looking to launch a Los Angeles event in January 2019.” A Frieze […]

5 Disruptive Trends Art Galleries Need to Understand If They Want to Survive

At this year’s Talking Galleries symposium in Barcelona, the debates boiled down to a few core issues. Here they are: 1. The Scale and Pace of the Gallery Sector Have Become Cancerous for Many. 2. Different Tiers of Galleries Are Now Playing Different Games With Different Rules. 3. The Art Industry Must Break Out of […]

Attention, Art Collectors: Here Is the Definitive Calendar of International Art Fairs for 2018

With the explosion of art fairs around the world, there’s only one way for the most enterprising collectors to navigate the year: strategize, strategize, strategize. To help, we’ve compiled a list of the most significant art fairs around the world, from New York to New Delhi.

Art-Fair Economics: Why Small Galleries Do Art Fairs Even When They Don’t Make Money

As the middle market shrinks, many dealers are finding they can’t afford to do fairs—but they can’t afford not to, either. Think art fairs are all about sold-out booths, comfortable shoes, and exclusive dinner invitations? Think again. For many small to mid-size galleries, fairs—like Art Basel in Basel, which opens to VIPs today—are an increasingly […]

The Gray Market: Why Museums Can’t Compete With Private Collectors (and Other Insights)

FALSE EQUIVALENCE: Although I always advise caution about these reports, sales at this year’s freshly entombed Frieze and Frieze Masters were allegedly strong from the jump. Numerous exhibitors were eager to broadcast their results (or at least, pretend to) on VIP preview night. But rather than resurrect the issue of dubious honesty from self-interested actors in a consequence-free […]

‘What Next?’ an Uncertain Art World Asks, Sticking to Proven Brands

LONDON — The art market is almost as old as art itself. But it’s only in the last decade or so, with increased globalization, digitization and the rise of art as a multibillion-dollar investment vehicle, that the market has been viewed as an industry. And where there is industry, conferences are sure to follow. On […]

All the Artists and National Pavilions in the 2017 Venice Biennale

The 57th edition of the Venice Biennale, titled “Viva Arte Viva” by curator Christine Macel, has released the list of 120 participating artists and its national pavilions. “In a world full of conflicts and jolts, in which humanism is being seriously jeopardized, art is the most precious part of the human being,” Macel has said […]

Welcome to the Garden of Forking Paths: Ed Winkleman on How to Navigate the Art Industry’s Strange New Landscape

There’s no question that contemporary art galleries are struggling these days. The market is sluggish, the essential handshake-based rules of the art trade are being confused by the proliferation of artworks on the internet, and, at the same time, competition for artists and a globalizing terrain are forcing dealers to take on more costs by […]

Dear Seattle Art Fair, I Love You and I Want You to Live

Just like last year, when the announcement came over the loudspeaker at 6 p.m. on Sunday that the Seattle Art Fair was closed, people applauded. But this time, the applause was a little more sparse, a little more nervous. Fair organizer Max Fishko said people clap only in Seattle. The desire for success is so […]

At Seattle Art Fair, the Interaction Between Technology and Modern Life

The Seattle Art Fair, started last year by Paul G. Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, has a proud inner geek.  But like Mr. Allen himself, who has fingerprints on much of the city’s explosion of growth, geekiness only touches the surface. Through a real estate development arm of his company, Vulcan Inc., he is building […]

Can an Art Fair Be a Political Act? Roman Dealer Paola Capata on Making Granpalazzo the World’s Most “Italian” Fair

Located in the 16th-century Palazzo Rospigliosi in the rustic country village of Zagarolo, a short drive outside of Rome,  Granpalazzo is unlike any art fair you’ve seen before. Instead of traditional booths, there are curated presentations of individual artists, elegantly spaced throughout the historic building. The walls are covered with historic frescos, the conversation is […]

How Galleries Can Get the Most From Art Fairs

With unstable markets and cautious collectors, art dealers everywhere are adopting leaner strategies that make the most of their gallery’s resources. Driving 40% of annual gallery revenue, according to TEFAF’s 2015 Art Market Report, art fairs remain a crucial part of the bottom line, providing global reach without the need for multiple locations. The opacity of […]

Elmgreen & Dragset create a fictional art fair in Beijing

The maverick Scandinavian artist duo Elmgreen & Dragset focus on an art world staple—art fairs and their enduring popularity—in their latest show, The Well Fair, which opens at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA) in Beijing on Sunday (24 January-17 April). The artists have transformed the main hall of UCCA into a fictional fair […]

Defying Fears of a Cooling Market

“Buy the best, forget the rest” has become the conventional wisdom for collectors in today’s investment-minded art market. But what does “the best” mean? Clearly it meant different things to the 77,000 people who flocked to Art Basel Miami Beach this month. The fair, the last major event of 2015 for the hectic contemporary art […]

The Best Instagrams of Art Basel in Miami Beach 2015

Pics or it didn’t happen. It is often not enough to just say that you were there–you need to provide evidence, usually in the form of visual representation. And with so many sights, soirées, and celebrities in Miami Beach for Art Basel, photo ops abound. Whether it’s a selfie with Paris Hilton or a panoramic […]

Off to the races: Miami Basel Begins, with Buoyant Sales Reports, a Bevy of Stella, and a Grab Bag of Celebrities

Art Basel Miami Beach opened its doors this morning to Earth’s primo art collectors, who perused the offerings from 267 galleries en route to snapping up works by blue-chip artists such as Picasso and Frank Stella, who continues his hot streak by having a dozen works spread among four different booths. Even more eye-catching are the text-based neon […]