Kobel's
Art Weekly

Kobel's Art Weekly 35 2026

No fewer than two art fairs drew Regine Müller to Salzburg for the Handelsblatt on 21 August: “It is all the more astonishing, then, that Salzburg as a fair venue has risen like a phoenix from the ashes in such a short space of time and is not only hosting Art & Antique this summer with renewed vigour at its new location, but has also established a second high-calibre fair, ‘Sifaf’ (Salzburg International Fine Art Fair Summer Edition). The trial run of Sifaf, held alongside the Salzburg Easter Festival, had encouraged the organisers to return in the summer as well. And all the signs suggest that the new fair is here to stay.”

Wassan Al-Khudhairi, Wael Shawky’s successor as director of Art Basel Qatar, explains her theoretical approach in an interview with Dan Duray for the Observer: “Sales matter because they are part of how galleries sustain their programmes and support artists over time. I don’t think we need to pretend that the market is somehow separate from an art fair, nor do I think curatorial rigour and the market have to be treated as opposing forces. [...] So the ambition is not to make the market invisible. It is to ensure that the encounter begins with the art, that there is sufficient depth and context for people to understand what an artist is doing and why the work matters. I think that can ultimately foster the kinds of relationships on which a healthy art ecosystem depends.” This is somewhat reminiscent of the comments made at the time by Cay Sophie Rabinowitz – briefly co-director of Art Basel – and may not be met with universal enthusiasm among gallery owners.

“The time for keeping a low profile is finally over,” reads the somewhat sensationalist headline in the Handelsblatt of 21 August accompanying Michael Lassmann’s report on the auction season: “Sotheby’s can look back on the best first half-year in its history with a turnover of 4.4 billion dollars, having increased its turnover by 58 per cent compared with the previous year. Auctions accounted for 3.4 billion, whilst private sales doubled their share to 826 million. With 90 per cent of lots sold, the firm achieved its highest sales rate since 2010. The Fine Arts division has recovered once again; the spring auctions in New York alone generated 908.6 million dollars with a record sales rate of 92.5 per cent. Christie’s was also far from idle in the first half of the year: the firm recorded a total of 4.5 billion dollars for the period, with auction turnover rising by 71 per cent to 3.5 billion, whilst revenue from private sales exceeded one billion.” However, auction houses have never been known for keeping a low profile, and it seems rather risky to infer a lasting trend from a single season.

The contraction in certain sectors of the art market has led Ursula Scheer to ask, in the FAZ of 22 August, how big is too big: “The trade fair organisers have also recognised where things are heading. Frieze in London is supporting emerging artists and gallery owners, whilst Art Basel has not set up yet another global art market exhibition in Doha, but rather a regional fair – curated and on a manageable scale. The mega-galleries have sufficient resources to continue transforming themselves, in some cases even beyond the inevitable generational change in family-run businesses. For the small and medium-sized galleries that do the groundwork, the situation is quite different.”

Founded in 2012, Beers Gallery in the centrally located London neighbourhood of Farringdon is closing its doors in an orderly manner: “Over the past decade and a half, the art world has changed dramatically. Economic pressures, market shifts and the rise of new digital platforms have transformed the way art is discovered, shared and collected. As the landscape continues to evolve, we feel this is the right moment for BEERS to embrace new opportunities and challenges as we turn our attention to the future.” The gallery has participated most frequently in Untitled, Volta and Zona Maco, with the Saatchi Gallery cited as a key partner. A recent exhibition, which has just opened, features not artists with whom it has collaborated in the past, but those who responded to an international open call – a format the gallery is keen to utilise. Perhaps it would indeed be better to speak of a market shake-up rather than a crisis.

The market for collectable cars bears similarities to the art market, as a report by specialist insurer Hagerty illustrates: “The figures are in, and the 2026 Monterey auctions made history. Total sales reached a record of $755.6M, surpassing even the pandemic-fuelled frenzy of 2022. Beneath the headline lay a more complicated story: the market is splitting between the cars collectors desperately wanted and everything else. Here are the key takeaways: modern supercars exceeded expectations and accounted for more than half of all sales. [...] Exceptional cars sold for record prices, whilst many more common models, from the 1950s and 1960s, sold for less than their condition would suggest.”

Artists’ agents appear to be growing in importance, at least in the Anglo-American market, as all but one of the 20 agencies listed by Anny Shaw in her overview for the Art Newspaper (may have a paywall) are based in the US or the UK.

Orlando Whitfield sees hope for the gallery as a business and art mediation model in Monocle: “The global profusion of art fairs has made collectors lazy and gallerists unadventurous. They are also prohibitively expensive – a couple of bad fairs in a row can be the kiss of death for smaller galleries. Even though the outlook might seem bleak, there are reasons for optimism. A contraction at the top could result in a market that is less reliant on art fairs and digital interaction. Galleries, both large and small, will then be able to focus on developing closer relationships with artists and collectors on home turf. In too many instances, art and the way it is sold have become indistinguishable from luxury goods. At times it can feel as though the market has forgotten what elevates art and why people want to own it. In my experience as a gallery owner, buyers were seeking human connection just as much as they were looking to build a collection.”

Tim Schneider dashes the wishful thinking of some art market participants that they might benefit from the impending transfer of wealth to subsequent generations in the free section of his newsletter The Gray Market, drawing on the VISA study “The great wealth transfer reality check” (PDF): “Around 75 per cent of the households set to benefit from this much-vaunted transfer currently occupy the top 10 per cent of the wealth distribution, according to the Visa study. What does this mean, exa[...] But even if $2.1m is still sufficient, the overarching point remains the same: nearly three-quarters of prospective American heirs are already multimillionaires right now, before they’ve received their first penny of inheritance.4 Which means, in turn, that most of the assets changing hands in the GWT are going to people whom art sellers and service providers should have already been targeting anyway.”

The growing art market in South-East Asia is increasingly attracting forgers, as Cyrus Naji has reported for the Financial Times: “There was a time when few people bought modern art in South Asia. Groundbreaking works were passed around the cosmopolitan elite spread across post-colonial India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Artists sold to their friends; connoisseurs to one another. Today it is a booming industry, exceeding $100 million in auction sales in 2025 alone. [...] But there is a darker side to this booming market. Academic neglect, a lack of documentation and the rise of online buying have combined to allow forgeries to proliferate in the market for South Asian modern art. ‘We are seeing an awful lot more dodgy stuff on the market,’ says Charles Moore, of London’s Grosvenor Gallery. The main targets are “the big names”, he says, referring to sought-after 20th-century modernists such as the French-trained Indian abstract painter SH Raza or the prolific Mumbai artist MF Husain, dubbed the “Picasso of India”, “but now it pays to forge works by mid-market artists as well.”“

In the summer lull “scandal” surrounding the €2.3 million light art installation at Frankfurt’s Konstablerwache, the criticised Head of Cultural Affairs, Ina Hartwig, has now spoken out in an interview with Sören Kemnade in the Frankfurter Neue Presse: “The city councillors laid the foundations for the bidding process back in 2020.” In 2023, Frankfurt Rhein-Main won the WDC 2026 title with the motto ‘Design for Democracy. Atmospheres for a better life’. Public space naturally plays a huge role in this. The second point concerns the funding. It comes from earmarked, unclaimed investment funds for city centre lighting. In the 2025 supplementary budget, these funds were earmarked for city centre illuminations to mark the WDC 2026 and allocated to the Department of Culture’s budget. The city councillors voted on this and approved it. The question then arose as to what form the illuminations should take. From several concepts for potential art in public spaces, the two lead departments – Economic Affairs and Culture – ultimately chose Janet Echelman.” The whole story is less of a political scandal and more of a fine example of how even quality and other media outlets (warning: link leads to BILD!) allow themselves to be exploited by social media trolls and provincial bigwigs when most people are on holiday and genuine news stories are scarce.

Heritage conservation often loses out when other interests are at play, reports Monopol (with material from dpa): “Fires, decay, property speculation: according to the German Foundation for Monument Protection, at least 1,077 monuments have been irretrievably lost in Germany over the past two years – more than one a day. This is revealed in the foundation’s so-called ‘Black Book’.”

The Ukrainian authorities have brought charges against two archaeologists for their involvement in illegal excavations in Russian-occupied Crimea, reports Brian Boucher in Artnews: “The suspects have allegedly been involved since 2014 in unauthorised excavations in Medieval Solkhat, in the city of Old Crimea. The excavations have destroyed culturally significant parts of the site, say prosecutors. One of the suspects allegedly handed over objects, including elements of the ancient water supply system, bowls and fragments of crockery, to the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, which then catalogued them as belonging to its own collection.” According to the public prosecutor’s office, they face up to twelve years’ imprisonment.

Local speculation suggests the Mafia may have been involved in the theft of the paintings by Antonello da Messina, which are said to be worth between 70 and 80 million euros, reports Crispian Balmer of Reuters: “City councillor for culture Enzo Caruso said the stolen Antonello works were so famous that selling them even on the black market would be virtually impossible, raising the possibility that they could be used as bargaining chips or collateral in criminal dealings. ‘The Mafia? It’s possible they might try to blackmail the state itself in order to return them. These are the kinds of dynamics that ordinary people never get to see,’ he said. He said another possibility was that the paintings could be used as guarantees or currency within the criminal underworld. [...] Renato Schifani, the President of Sicily, issued a statement saying that the museum’s CCTV system and alarm had been working normally, adding that an internal investigation was underway to determine whether any museum staff had been involved.”

The Art Newspaper (possibly paywalled) has a new editor-in-chief in Benjamin Sutton, the former head of its US editorial team.