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Everything we have published
43 pieces, newest first. Fair reports, market analysis, and the calendar behind both.
2026
37 pieces- Fairs · October 27, 2026 · Célia Megias
Art Basel Paris 2026 closes two days early, and the sales report barely notices
Protests in Paris shut the Grand Palais on Friday evening and cancelled the public weekend. The fair's top sales had been done since Tuesday afternoon. A week ago we asked whether Paris would clear London's £5 million mark. It did, with two paintings from 1965, and the early closure answered our other question more bluntly than any sales report could.
- Fairs · October 20, 2026 · Célia Megias
Frieze London 2026 closes with a £5 million Brueghel at Masters, sold-out Focus stands, and a Tate fund that shopped at Hauser & Wirth
A week ago we listed three things to count once the tents came down in The Regent's Park. The reports are in. The top of the market stayed in the historical tent, the discovery sections sold out, and the museum money that reached a Focus stand came from a fund created this year for exactly that purpose.
- Fairs · October 13, 2026 · Célia Megias
Il Pellicano pours aperitivo on the Thames for Frieze Week, and there is no art in it
The Tuscan hotel takes over Bobbi's Bar at Nick Jones's new St Clement from October 13 to 18, with its barman of almost twenty years and a negroni named after Juergen Teller. It is the clearest example this year of what the fair week has become for everyone who is not a gallery: a room full of the right people, borrowed for six days.
- Fairs · October 13, 2026 · Célia Megias
Four of the twelve galleries in the Frieze sculpture park have a stand in the tents, and the price list explains the other eight
Frieze London and Frieze Masters open to invited guests on Wednesday, October 14, and to the public from Thursday. We said in September we would check which of the park's galleries also made it indoors. The answer is a third of them, and it is the most useful thing to know about the fair before the first sale is reported.
- Fairs · October 13, 2026 · Célia Megias
Art Week Tokyo breaks its one selling exhibition into ten gallery shows, and that is the edition's real bet
The 2026 edition runs November 4 to 8 across a record 55 venues, with no hall, no booths and free entry to every gallery. Its centrepiece, AWT Focus, stops being a single curated show and becomes ten projects in ten spaces. The idea is right for Tokyo. The way the ten were chosen is the part to watch.
- Market · October 6, 2026 · Martin Duch
Kusama's first big test since her death found a price, not a premium, and Hong Kong's money went to fresh Foujita instead
The autumn sales in Hong Kong were the first serious read on Yayoi Kusama's market since she died in August. Her pumpkins sold at roughly what they would have fetched a year ago. The bidding fights were elsewhere: an untouched single-owner collection and Southeast Asian modern painting.
- Market · September 29, 2026 · Célia Megias
The Armory Show closes with a $3 million Pollock, four works for two museums, and a tariff wall to the north
The fair's two new acquisition prizes paid out as promised, and the Bronx Museum spent $14,000 of its $15,000. The harder number to read is the one nobody put in a press release: what a 50% US duty on Canadian art did to the dealers who came down from Montreal and Toronto.
- Fairs · September 27, 2026 · Célia Megias
Frieze Sculpture puts eleven works in The Regent's Park, and the gallery list says more than the theme
The 14th edition runs free in the English Gardens until November 1, curated for a fourth year by Fatoş Üstek. Two of the twelve galleries behind the works are blue-chip. The rest come from Dubai, Mumbai, Sydney, Los Angeles, Prague and Bochum, which is the more interesting fact about the park this year.
- Fairs · September 25, 2026 · Célia Megias
The Armory Show opens with a $2 million Joan Mitchell, and the younger galleries in Presents sell out first
The headline sale came from the secondary-market end of the floor. The more telling numbers came from the fair's cheapest stands, where several first-time exhibitors had cleared their booths before the VIP preview closed.
- Collecting · September 24, 2026 · Célia Megias
Elton John's photographs at the Jeu de Paume, and what a private collection gains from a public hang
Fragile Beauté brings more than 300 prints from the Elton John and David Furnish collection to Paris after its V&A run. It is a show of appetite more than argument, and a clear case of how a collector's holdings become a museum's program.
- Fairs · September 21, 2026 · Célia Megias
Art Basel Paris 2026: a new director, 211 galleries, and a fair moving out into the city
The fifth edition runs October 23 to 25 at the Grand Palais, with Preview Days on the 21st and 22nd. Under Karim Crippa it adds a record 12 joint booths, moves Premise into the Salon Seine and spreads its public program across nine sites in Paris.
- Fairs · September 17, 2026 · Célia Megias
The Armory Show opens next week with more than 240 exhibitors and a Caribbean thread running through the whole fair
The line-up grew by about ten since July. Focus and Platform are both built on the Caribbean and its diaspora, a Miami museum is putting acquisition money on the floor, and the fair is ten weeks ahead of Art Basel Miami Beach.
- Market · September 5, 2026 · Martin Duch
The Great Wealth Transfer is already on the auction calendar, and it arrived as supply, not demand
Single-owner collections made up 24% of what Sotheby's, Christie's and Phillips sold in 2025, against 9% a decade earlier. The trillions everyone talks about are changing what comes to market faster than they are changing who buys.
- Galleries · August 25, 2026 · Célia Megias
White Cube took its summer show to a National Trust house, and Britain's country estates have become a gallery circuit
White Cube at Claydon runs to September 14 with more than 40 works by artists including Tracey Emin, Antony Gormley, Anselm Kiefer and Cai Guo-Qiang. It puts one of the world's major commercial galleries at the center of a summer circuit that now runs from Norfolk to the Isle of Bute.
- Market · August 14, 2026 · Célia Megias
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 · Célia Megias
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 · Célia Megias
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 · Célia Megias
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 · Célia Megias
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 · Célia Megias
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 · Célia Megias
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 · Célia Megias
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 · Célia Megias
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 · Célia Megias
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.