Everything we have published

29 pieces, newest first. Fair reports, market analysis, and the calendar behind both.

2026

23 pieces

Market · August 14, 2026 · Martin Duch
One company now owns four of the fairs on your calendar, and it has started rescheduling them
Frieze runs London, Los Angeles, New York, Seoul, and since 2023 The Armory Show and Expo Chicago. The Armory's two-week move this September is the first time the group has visibly managed its fairs as a portfolio rather than as rivals.
Digital · August 12, 2026 · Martin Duch
Christie's first AI sale made $728,784 against a $600,000 estimate, and 37% of the bidders had never bought there before
Thirty-four lots, an 82% sell-through, a $277,200 Refik Anadol at the top, and nearly 4,000 artists signing an open letter to stop it. The protest and the result are both worth reading, and only one of them changes what happens next.
Fairs · August 9, 2026 · Célia Megias
Frieze London runs five days in October and six weeks in the park, and only one of them is ticketed
The 2026 edition opens in The Regent's Park from October 14 to 18, with Frieze Masters on Gloucester Green and a new section built around code. Frieze Sculpture is open from September 16 to November 1, free, and it is doing more work than the fair admits.
Biennials · August 6, 2026 · Martin Duch
Istanbul split its biennial into three legs across three years, and the format may not survive the experiment
The 18th edition opened in September 2025, spends all of 2026 as an academy programme, and returns for a third leg in September 2027. Venice runs to November, the Whitney ran six months, and a biennial is quietly becoming a duration rather than an event.
Fairs · August 3, 2026 · Martin Duch
The Armory Show moved itself two weeks, and the reason is that it no longer has to fight
The 2026 edition runs September 24 to 27 at the Javits Center with around 230 galleries from more than 30 countries. The move to late September clears a collision with Frieze Seoul, a fair the Armory now shares an owner with.
Biennials · August 1, 2026 · Célia Megias
Documenta 16 has an all-women curatorial team and a hundred days in 2027 to repair an institution
Naomi Beckwith was appointed in December 2024, the first Black artistic director in the exhibition's 65-year history. Kassel opens June 12 and closes September 19, 2027, and the edition before hers is the reason the appointment carried so much weight.
Collecting · July 31, 2026 · Martin Duch
Sotheby's securitised $900 million of art loans in January, and it was oversubscribed
The global art loan book is estimated between $28.7 and $33.3 billion for 2025 and forecast toward $40 billion this year. Nearly half of borrowers say the reason they borrow against their collection is to buy more of it.
Fairs · July 28, 2026 · Célia Megias
Art Basel Miami Beach 2026: five things that will decide how the December fair reads
The fair returns to the Convention Center on December 4, with preview days on the 2nd and 3rd. After a year in which every Art Basel edition beat its predecessor, Miami is where the recovery gets its verdict.
Collecting · July 24, 2026 · Célia Megias
An art advisor takes 5% to 20%, and the only rule that matters is which side pays
Commission on purchase price, monthly retainers from £1,500 to £10,000, or hourly for a collection review. The fee model is public; the conflict it creates is the part nobody puts on a website.
Fairs · July 21, 2026 · Célia Megias
How Miami Art Week actually works, and why the density is the product
One main fair, a dozen satellites, and five days engineered so that nobody has to justify the flight. A structural guide to the week that reorganizes the American art calendar every December.
Galleries · July 18, 2026 · Célia Megias
A booth costs a gallery between $7,000 and $60,000 before anything is hung on it
Major fairs price stands at roughly $76 to $79 per square foot, and blue-chip galleries pay about $1,000 per square metre for the central positions. The fee is the smallest part of the bill and the only part anyone publishes.
Market · July 16, 2026 · Martin Duch
A $19.4 million Basquiat and Warhol collaboration, and a first half that rewarded only the safest names
The auction houses closed a solid H1 2026. Read the results by category rather than by total and the recovery looks narrower: postwar and modern absorbed the money, and everything edgier stayed where it was.
Galleries · July 11, 2026 · Martin Duch
Hauser & Wirth is opening in Palo Alto, six years after the last mega-gallery gave up on the Bay Area
A 2,600 square foot space in a former post office near Stanford, opening in spring with Calder and O'Keeffe. Pace closed its Palo Alto gallery in 2022 and Gagosian left San Francisco in 2020, which makes this a re-entry rather than an expansion.
Galleries · July 8, 2026 · Célia Megias
Two galleries closed in June, and neither of them was failing at the thing galleries are judged on
Dépendance in Brussels and Tiwani Contemporary in London shut within weeks of each other. In a year when the aggregate market is up 4%, the middle of the gallery sector is being squeezed by costs it cannot pass on.
Collecting · June 30, 2026 · Célia Megias
Nine of twelve: how the preview day quietly became the whole fair
Avant-Première in Paris, Basel Exclusive in Switzerland, and a Hong Kong edition that closed three quarters of its seven-figure business before the public arrived. The most important product the fairs sell is now a date, not a booth.
Fairs · June 24, 2026 · Martin Duch
A $35 million Picasso, 290 galleries, and a preview format built to make the first hour decisive
Art Basel closed its 2026 flagship edition on June 21 with 90,000 visitors from 103 countries and a sales pattern that vindicated Basel Exclusive, the initiative that had more than 190 galleries holding work back for the opening.
Fairs · May 27, 2026 · Martin Duch
The 2026 fair calendar in exhibitor counts, and what the smaller numbers mean
Frieze Los Angeles ran 100 galleries. Frieze New York closed with 25,000 visitors from 75 countries. The Armory Show gathered 230-plus. Read together, the counts describe a circuit optimizing rather than expanding.
Biennials · May 13, 2026 · Célia Megias
In Minor Keys: the Biennale Koyo Kouoh did not live to open
The 61st International Art Exhibition runs from May 9 to November 22, realized exactly as its late curator defined it. 110 participants, and a title that argues against everything a biennial is usually built to do.
Digital · April 7, 2026 · Martin Duch
Online art sales fell to their lowest level since 2019, in the year the market recovered
$9.2 billion, down to a 15% share. The channel that was supposed to make the fair circuit optional had its worst year in six, at exactly the moment attendance across the circuit hit its highs.
Fairs · April 1, 2026 · Martin Duch
Hong Kong produced more seven-figure sales in its preview days than in all of 2025
240 galleries, 91,500 visitors, twelve seven-figure transactions and nine of them before the public got in. The thirteenth edition also came with a five-year exclusivity deal that locks Art Basel to the city.
Fairs · March 24, 2026 · Martin Duch
450 museums walked through TEFAF, and that is the number that matters
The 39th Maastricht edition drew more than 50,000 visitors across eight days and 276 dealers from 24 countries. Its real currency is institutional: the fair where acquisitions committees, not collectors, set the tone.
Market · March 17, 2026 · Martin Duch
The art market grew 4% and the online market fell to a 2019 low. Both are the same story.
The tenth Art Basel and UBS report puts 2025 global sales at $59.6 billion after two years of decline. Underneath the recovery, the channel that was supposed to be the future had its worst year in six.
Fairs · February 11, 2026 · Martin Duch
Art Basel opened in Doha by throwing out the booth
87 galleries, 17,000 visitors, and an inaugural Gulf edition built as a curated exhibition under Wael Shawky rather than a grid of stands. The most interesting thing about it was the format, not the guest list.

2025

6 pieces

Digital · December 16, 2025 · Martin Duch
Zero 10: Art Basel gave digital art a floor at the fair instead of a room down the road
The December Miami edition launched a global initiative for art of the digital era, with sold-out Beeple editions and a roster running through Tyler Hobbs, Kim Asendorf, Joe Pease and XCOPY. The timing is the interesting part.
Market · December 11, 2025 · Célia Megias
At NADA and Untitled, the market under $20,000 held better than the market above $1 million
Nearly 140 exhibitors at NADA, 157 at Untitled, and a week in which the emerging end of Miami Art Week did the quiet work of proving the recovery was not confined to the blue chip.
Fairs · December 9, 2025 · Martin Duch
Art Basel Miami Beach closed 2025 with an $18 million Warhol and a market that had stopped apologizing
283 galleries, 80,000 visitors and a Muhammad Ali portrait at the top of the sheet. The December fair ended a two-year correction on a note of confidence, and gave the digital-art sector its first real institutional platform.
Fairs · December 8, 2025 · Célia Megias
Design Miami turned twenty and asked what craft is still for
Glenn Adamson curated the anniversary edition under the theme Make. Believe., with more than 70 exhibitors. Two decades in, collectible design has the collectors it wanted and a harder question about what it is.
Fairs · October 29, 2025 · Célia Megias
Paris invented a preview before the preview, and sold a $23 million Richter in it
206 galleries, 73,000 visitors and a new Avant-Première tier at the Grand Palais. The October edition confirmed Paris as the strongest challenger to London in Europe, and introduced the mechanism Art Basel would take everywhere else.
Fairs · October 22, 2025 · Célia Megias
At Frieze, the 1909 painting outsold everything in the contemporary tent
More than 280 exhibitors across Frieze London and Frieze Masters, and a top reported sale of $3.01 million for a Gabriele Münter. When the historical fair beats the contemporary one, that is a market telling you where it feels safe.