The Art Basel and UBS Survey of Global Collecting 2024 looks at the way the very rich have been spending their money recently. Authored by Dr Clare McAndrew and conducted by her consultancy Arts Economics in collaboration with UBS, the report analyses the buying behaviours of something over 3,660 High Net Worth Individuals in 14 major markets during 2023 and the first half of 2024.
It’s a beefy piece of work, running to nearly 200 pages and more than 70 tables and figures – exactly the level of detail we have come to expect from Arts Economics. And while size and depth aren’t always a certainty of credibility, in this case we’re inclined to believe the results.
UBS is essentially an investment bank, so anything the HNWIs do will be of interest to them. The appearance of Art Basel as a co-sponsor though turns the spotlight to spending on art, so we looked for the key pointers in there.
The headline is that sales in the art market slowed slightly over 2023, falling by 4% to $65 billion. Dr McAndrew concludes that “the persistent backdrop of geopolitical tensions, trade fragmentation, higher-for-longer interest rates, and other region-specific issues continue to weigh on the sentiment and plans of buyers and sellers” in 2024.
The survey reports that average expenditure by HNWIs dropped by 32% in 2023 to just under $363,905. But despite an obviously tough art market, the median level (basically, the middle value in their expenditure) barely changed – falling marginally from $50,165 in 2022 to $50,000 in 2023.
So the overall fall can be attributed to less spending on the more expensive stuff, and certainly there seems to be more interest in prints (35% of HNWs bought prints in 2023) and works on paper (56%) both of which are likely to be cheaper than paintings or sculpture.
Equally, there’s more support for artists at an earlier (and probably more economical) stage of their careers. The share of HNWI’s total expenditure devoted to new and emerging artists increased by 8% in 2023/2024 to 52%.
There was a lot of regional variance, too. The highest median came from the 300 HNWIs surveyed from Mainland China, who recorded a median of $97,000 – more than double that of any other region surveyed (like France at $38,000, UK at $31,000 and Hong Kong $28,000).
As for where they’re buying – the HNWIs seem happy to shop around, buying from an average of 17 galleries in 2024 (up from 13 in 2019) with 88% of them also purchasing from at least one new dealer over the last year.
Dealers remain the most popular channel for purchasing, with 95% of respondents in 2023 and 2024 buying from a dealer. And increasingly those dealers will be close to home; 70% of the galleries the HNWIs purchased from in 2024 were described as ‘local’, compared with 50% in 2022. 72% of collectors surveyed bought through dealer websites or online viewing rooms, and 43% purchased through Instagram. 67% bought at auctions.
HNWIs reported attending an average of 49 art-related events in 2023 and aimed to attend 46 in 2024 – eight more than in pre-pandemic 2019. The total included eight gallery exhibitions and six art fairs.
The art fair story, incidentally, is pretty good; in the first half of 2024, 41% of respondents said they made a purchase at an art fair, up from 39% in 2023. Art Basel will have been pleased to hear that.
As for the future, 43% of collectors planned to purchase art in the next 12 months. That’s a decrease from previous years, when around 50% of those surveyed expressed plans to purchase.
But nine of ten of HNWIs surveyed were optimistic about the global art market’s performance in the next six months, which compares very favourably from the 77% who were optimistic at the end of 2023. (This survey was done before the US presidential election, of course, and it’s not yet clear how Trump’s success will affect the art market. One can surmise that the rich will get richer, though, which implies continuing good health for the art market.)
A more diverse range of price points in purchases and more emphasis on relatively lower priced works allows the report to observe that the changes will contribute to “potentially expanding the market’s base and encouraging growth in more affordable art segments which could provide greater stability in future”.
The Art Basel and UBS Survey of Global Collecting 2024 is available to download for free here.
Be the first to comment