The NY Times ran a good article on the flow of money into the art market. It touches on market segments, geographic participation and new opportunities for buying on line.
The NY Times reports
Source: The NY Times
While new buyers are entering the market, particularly Americans, others who had helped support it, mainly from emerging economies, are pulling back. The result is a bifurcated market, with some categories, notably contemporary art and Impressionism, experiencing feverish demand and fetching fantastic sums, and activity elsewhere subdued.
“Buyers need to go in realizing that they’re unlikely to get things at auction within the estimate” in the hotter niches, Ms. Gyorgy cautioned. “People need to be prepared for that; some say they never had a chance to put the paddle up. It’s not true for every sector or for Grade B and C works. That’s not a bad sign. It’s just that there are many markets that make up the art market.”
Whatever support certain segments may be receiving from injections of hot money, the broader market seems to be cooling off. The European Fine Art Foundation estimates that global sales of art and antiques fell 7 percent last year, to €43 billion, or $56 billion.
Prices were down, too. The Mei Moses World All Art Index, which is based on prices of works sold multiple times at auction, though not all in the same year, was down 3.3 percent in 2012, a performance that “puts into question the continued recovery of the worldwide auction art market,” according to a report by Beautiful Asset Advisors, the company that compiles the index.
Even with the decline, the index produced a compound annual return of 7.4 percent in the 10 years through 2012. But the firm also points out that the index is off to a weak start this year, falling an additional 5.8 percent in the first quarter.
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