ARTnews Top 200 Collectors. 2024

To say that the art market is on shaky ground may be the understatement of the year. As one dealer told me this past spring, in unequivocal terms: The market's shit. Anyone who tells you different is lying. Dealers and advisers across the board have confirmed as much (some of them adding that its being a US presidential election year doesn't help matters). The talk of the summer was a memo circulated by adviser Jacob King, who, in taking the temperature of the market as it stands, posited that an investment mindset defined as an approach to buying art that boils down to a single question: how likely is it to go up in value? had run amok. While this isn't especially new or exclusive to the art market, King argued that this way of thinking, primarily that of the speculator, had become the prevailing assumption among buyers; in other words, it was no longer taboo to mention in polite company.