The art market in 2024: what else we learned

Going through the three art market reports that have landed on magpie’s desk in the last few days – Artprice.com’s The Art Market in 2024; the Art Basel / UBS Art Market Report 2025; and The Intelligence Report: The Year Ahead 2025 by Artnet – meant we accumulated a large number of … well, numbers. Away from the main headlines, here are some that we found particularly interesting.

Dealers
  • 17% increase in sales year on year among the smallest dealers (turnover below $250,000pa) – the best performing category by dealer size Art Basel
  • 24% proportion of dealers that have been in business for 10 years or less Art Basel
  • 75 median number of works sold by dealers in 2024 Art Basel
  • 85% share of dealer sales at $50,000 or less Art Basel
Buyers
  • 38% share of dealers’ sales to new buyers (up 5% from 2023) Art Basel
  • 72 average number of individual buyers that dealers sold to in 2024 (48 for smaller dealers turning over less than $250,000) Art Basel
Artists
  • 23 average number of artists represented by dealers (39 for those operating in both the primary and secondary markets) Art Basel
  • 56% contribution to dealers’ annual turnover coming from their top three artists Art Basel
Art fairs
  • 10% increase in dealers’ costs for exhibiting at art fairs in 2024 Art Basel
  • 31% proportion of dealers who cut back on art fair exhibition in 2024 (they averaged three fairs each in the year) Art Basel
Women
  • 9 number of women among the 100 top-selling fine artists at auction in 2024 (it was 11 in 2023) Artnet
  • 63 number of women in the Top 500 artists ranked by their annual auction turnover in 2024 Artprice
Auctions
  • 9 number of women among the 100 top-selling fine artists at auction in 2024 (it was 11 in 2023) Artnet
  • 63 number of women in the Top 500 artists ranked by their annual auction turnover in 2024 Artnet
  • 10% proportion of art auction lots that sold for under $79 Artprice
  • 26.5% average decline in fine art auction sales at the top three auction houses – Christie’s -18%, Sotheby’s -38.1%, Phillips -23.5% Artnet
  • 7 the number of works by Jean-Michel Basquiat in the top 10 contemporary lots sold at auction in 2024 Artnet
  • $14m the loss in value of Rothko’s Untitled (yellow and blue) between its $46.4m sale at auction in 2015 and its $32.4m at Sotheby’s Hong Kong in November 2024 Artprice
The future
  • 33% proportion of art-trade businesses expected improving sales in 2025 (down 3% from 2023) – 47% were hoping for a stable year, 19% anticipated a decline Art Basel
  • 42% proportion of dealers reporting ‘political/economic volatility’ as their major challenge for the year. Second was ‘relationships with existing customers’ at 39%, third was ‘costs of art fairs’ at 34% Art Basel

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