Art Sales Fell by 12% Last Year, Art Basel and UBS Report Says

Sales in the international artistic market decreased by 12 % in 2024, according to the report on the global art market of Basel and Ubs published on Tuesday. The annual report, seen as the most reliable indicator of the size and health of the artistic market, said that sales have decreased for the second consecutive year.

“The decline of the value was guided by cooling in the foreground”, says the report, which describes 2024 as “a year of continuous geopolitical tensions, economic volatility and commercial fragmentation”. Sales of auctions of individual works that recovered over $ 10 million have decreased by 39 percent, says the relationship and the galleries with a turnover of over $ 10 million has seen sales drops by 9 percent.

“People were more adverse to risk,” said Mcandrew, an economist who wrote the report, in an interview. “From the point of view of the offer, people were waiting to see how things have gone and resisted. This has influenced what happened on the market.”

“The buyers were looking at this uncertain and volatile picture and wanted to put money in something more liquid or something that gave them entrances,” Mcandrew said.

The report – which is the most widely cited investigation of the activity in the international artistic market notoriously opaque – estimates the total value of global art sales in 2024 to $ 57.5 billion, based on data publicly available from auction houses and responses to the survey of a few 1,600 retailers.

Sales reached an $ 68.2 billion peak in 2014, according to the report, but since then they have been flat or falling, even if the billionaire wealth has been more than doubled in the last 10 years, reaching a record of $ 15.6 trillion. At that moment, Sales of other luxury goods they approached; LVMH, the largest luxury conglomerate in the world, has published an annual turnover of about $ 88 billion Last year.

“There is so much wealth in different parts of the world that is currently not buying art,” said Mcandrew.

“The focus is so much about the main people they are already buying,” he added. “Growth must derive from the expansion of the kingdom of interest”.

Last year, sales decreased in all key geographical regions of artistic trade, says the report. The United States have maintained its dominant market position, but the turnover dropped by 9 % to $ 24.8 billion, due in part, affirms the report, to the “political uncertainty that surrounds the presidential elections”. Despite the “Brexit challenges”, Great Britain has resumed second place with $ 10.4 billion in sales, contracting only 5 % on an annual basis, according to the report. Art sales have decreased by heavy 31 % in China to $ 8.4 billion, its lowest level since 2009, following “slower economic growth, a collapse of the continuous real estate market and other economic challenges”, says the report.

The only bright point in the report was an increase in activity at lower price levels.

The total number of transactions of global artistic trade grew by 3 % in 2024 to 40.5 million, a peak, led by the post-Pandic expansion of online trading, says the report. The auction sales of works sold for less than $ 5,000 adds the ratio, with a 7 % increase, while the smaller retailers with a turnover of less than $ 250,000 recorded a 17 % increase in companies, their second consecutive growth year. The smaller retailers attracted the largest share of new buyers, “highlighting the importance of the smallest galleries in the expansion of the market to a wider audience”, according to Art Basel and Ubs.

Looking to the future, the report stated that 80 % of retailers expected stable or improved sales. However, those optimistic answers had been completed before the announcement of President Trump last Wednesday steep rates on almost all imports in the United States and in The stock market falls He followed. Even if, for the moment, Art seems to be mostly exempt From the US rates, retailers take care of how these measures and the economic turbulence they are causing, will damage international art trade.

“It’s bad,” said Mcandrew, who stressed that the effects of the rates remained unclear. “The growth of the contemporary market was built around goods capable of moving easily through the borders. It is the worst possible time to hit the art market.”

“There will still be the potential of mutual ones and the damage they could do, more generally, will filter anyway,” he added.

The “geopolitical tensions, economic volatility and commercial fragmentation” that the UBS and Art Basel report identified as suppressors in 2024 do not seem to facilitate soon.