There were reasons to believe that the comparatively successful November auctions signaled that the art market had turned a corner. Christie’s, for instance, reported that its final revenue numbers were only down 6 percent year over year, and that its 2H24 numbers had ticked upward. But new data provided to me exclusively by market insights firm ARTDAI shows that the overall auction performance of art and design objects was lower in the second half of ’24 than during the same period in ’23, continuing a slide that began two and a half years ago after the peak in the first half of 2022. (One reason things seem worse in the auction data is that much of the market has moved to private sales, which are way up.)
Since ARTDAI only follows sales of art across Christie’s, Phillips, and Sotheby’s, its data excludes the transactions of luxury objects that have become increasingly trendy, and that I have written about quite a bit of late. Therefore, its numbers have been more ominous than the broader industry reports, which include substantial non-art property. ARTDAI reported sales of $7.4 billion in 2023. Last year, that number fell 25.6 percent, to $5.5 billion. Let’s hope that we’ve achieved a manageable bottom.
