Kobel's
Art Weekly

Kobel's Art Weekly 27 2026

The art market began 2026 with a faint hope that things would now start to pick up again. However, the differences compared with previous economic cycles cannot be ignored, as the first part of our three-part review of the spring season makes clear.

In WeLT, Marcus Woeller in the first days of January searches for an explanation for the trend towards the merging of the markets for collectibles and art: "The luxury segment no longer serves merely as a supplement, but as a stabiliser – and possibly as a growth engine. It is more predictable and crisis-proof than the market for classical art, which is suffering from a dwindling supply of the highest quality, while the global economy as a whole is groaning under geopolitical uncertainty. Even ultra-wealthy buyers in the high-price segment are acting more cautiously. However, they share an attitude with younger customers: they are making less and less distinction between E and U, between fine art and luxury objects, and are instead investing in iconic pieces with history. Auction houses are following this logic."

The art lending sector, which has grown rapidly in recent years, is experiencing a setback, explains Josh Spero in the Financial Times (paywall): "Half of non-bank companies that lend against artworks experienced loan defaults in 2024, up from just 17 per cent two years earlier, a new study shows. [...] Harry Smith, CEO of art appraiser Gurr Johns, said: ‘The traditional markets are divided between the best and the rest. Loans for the best are fine – loans for the rest are absolutely not fine.’ Gurr Johns, which annually values $4-5 billion worth of artworks used as collateral, is abandoning its small lending business."

The Berlin gallery Mehdi Chouakri is taking a break, I report in Artmagazine. The gallery owner explains his decision to Brian Boucher of Artnews: ‘My decision is for very personal reasons,’ said Chouakri in an email to ARTnews. ‘As you know, the traditional primary market model requires more and more time and energy, and I want to dedicate more of my time to the people close to me.’ The gallery may mount another exhibition as soon as this autumn, he said.

Confidence in the art market is back, sums up Daniel Cassady for Artnews in ArtTactic's Global Art Market Outlook 2026 (only £245): "The recovery, however, is not evenly spread. The strongest confidence sits at the very top and the very bottom of the market. Works priced above $1 million are seeing renewed interest as high-quality supply returns, while sub-$50,000 works benefit from steady transactional activity and broader buyer participation. The mid-market remains squeezed between those two poles, with fewer buyers willing to stretch.‘ The term ’mid-market" has different meanings on either side of the Atlantic.

Cultural policy reporter Peter Grabowski elicits insights into the art market from Isabel Apiarius-Hanstein of Cologne's Kunsthaus Lempertz, Düsseldorf gallery owner Rupert Pfab, Nadine Oberste-Hetbleck from the Central Archive for German and International Art Market Research (ZADIK) in Cologne, and myself in the radio programme ‘Moon prices and million-pound losses: the art market in crisis’ on WDR3, also available as a podcast for download.

Nifty Gateway is closing down. The well-known NFT platform is being pulled by its parent company Gemini, a crypto service provider owned by the Winklevoss brothers and based in Malta. Artists, collectors and ‘investors’ have until 23 April to transfer their assets to other platforms. Valentina di Liscia comments on Hyperallegic.

The Handelsblatt appears to have discontinued its online reporting on the art market. The last current text comes from the investment section, and the last regular text under the art market label dates from early January. A request for clarification as to whether this situation is permanent or temporary has been left unanswered by the Handelsblatt Media Group press office since February 11. If online reporting is indeed no longer accessible even to subscribers, a previously authoritative voice in the public sphere would be largely lost.

The change of ownership of The Art Newspaper from Inna Bazhenova to the Hong Kong-based AMTD Group does not seem to be going entirely smoothly, reports George Nelson in Artnews. The gist of the detailed article: there is a dispute over money and the parties are meeting in court.

According to its website, the Thomas Salis gallery in Salzburg has been permanently closed since the end of last year. Brita Sachs was the first to notice this for the FAZ (paywall). I report the closure of the Sakhile & Me gallery in Frankfurt for Artmagazine.

As the art market becomes increasingly part of the luxury goods industry, it is worth taking a look at the trends there, believes Elisa Carollo of the Observer in March: "Luxury industry reports now provide a crucial barometer of where the art market may be headed, particularly as recent surveys rank art as the worst-performing personal luxury good. That finding alone suggests the art market still has meaningful ground to cover in responding to behavioural shifts among HNW individuals that adjacent industries have already begun to navigate." Who would have thought that art could perform modestly when placed on the shelf alongside handbags and trainers?!

Ursula Scheer has read the new Art Basel and UBS Art Market Report 2026 (PDF) for the FAZ (paywall): “Based on this, a picture emerges with both bright and dark spots. The rise in global art market turnover to an estimated $59.6 billion compared with 2024 does mark a turnaround following two previous years of declining turnover, but it is concentrated at the very top of the market – and, on balance, remains well below the record figure of $67.8 billion in 2022.”

George Nelson summarises the findings of the A.I. in Galleries Report 2026 (PDF) for Artnews: “A new report suggests artificial intelligence is already widely used in commercial galleries, but largely without oversight. According to the AI in Galleries report by the art industry network First Thursday, 84 per cent of galleries surveyed say they are using AI tools in their daily work. Yet only 8 per cent have a formal policy governing how those tools should be used. The findings are based on interviews with 103 gallery professionals around the world, including owners, directors, and staff working primarily in the UK, Europe, and the US. The report paints a picture of an industry quietly adopting new technology whilst failing to implement thorough governance and strategy.”

I spoke with Berlin gallerist Johann König on his podcast Was mit Kunst about the art market, media coverage of it and my career.

Just under a year after the takeover of Artnet and, previously, Artsy by investor Andrew E. Wolff, Daniel Cassady at Artnews was the first to report the merger of the two companies, and two days later Alex Greenberger reported in the same publication on widespread redundancies, particularly within Artnet’s editorial team. I spoke to Andrew Wolff for Monopol about the merger of the two companies and their future.

With Foundation, another NFT marketplace is closing down, reports Harrison Jacobs in Artnews.

Sometimes a critical outside perspective helps, though it doesn’t always fall on receptive ears. Kabhir Jhala writes about the Gallery Weekend Berlin in the Art Newspaper in May: “The model is successful, having been copied dozens of times from London to Warsaw, but is not without fault. For those only consulting the GWB map, they might question whether Berlin’s commercial art scene stopped growing after 2015. Of the galleries regularly taking part, just four—Noah Klink, Sweetwater, Schiefe Zähne and Molitor—were founded in the past decade. Unlike an art fair, galleries do not apply. Rather, they are invited to join through a selection committee, and the list of exhibitors stays “more or less the same year after year”, says GWB’s director Antonia Ruder.”

The insolvent London-based Stephen Friedman leaves behind a mountain of debt amounting to £7.8 million, as Anny Shaw has researched for the Art Newspaper.

“The Venice Biennale, the prestigious international art fair, opens this week”. Such a matter-of-fact, nonchalant tone as that used by Amy Kazmin in the Financial Times in May has probably never been seen in the press before. Behind the scenes, the Biennale has long been regarded as the world’s largest art fair. Yet gallery owners and dealers have never really been keen to acknowledge the event’s commercial nature. That has changed, believe Gareth Harris and Anny Shaw in the Art Newspaper (possibly paywall): “Not so this year, with an unprecedented number of dealers, auction houses and private foundations openly pricing and selling works to the crowds of collectors descending on the city this week.”

The Aire de Paris gallery has announced its closure on Instagram. Devorah Lauter spoke to the gallery owners for Cultured about the insolvency and changes in the art market.

New York gallery owner Marc Staus sees the gulf between the market’s elite and everyone else, as highlighted by Hyperallergic, as a warning sign: “The system is not healthy, and after Pollock we are led to believe that everything is going swimmingly – perhaps even brilliantly – in our important art universe. It isn’t. And these results are so infuriating to so many. As if the art market were a playground for the super-rich. That is true and not true. The art market has tens of thousands of artists, most of whom are struggling, creating things we didn’t ask for, and enriching our lives. We need them, and we need the galleries.”

The narrative of the ever-expanding top tier of the art market is beginning to show cracks, reports Robin Pogrebin in the New York Times (paywall): “In perhaps the clearest sign yet of a profound shift in the art market, Pace Gallery plans to announce on Thursday that it is reducing its artist portfolio by 50 artists and its staff by 50 employees – a sign that even a renowned, established gallery must cut staff in this difficult economic climate.” According to Daniel Cassady of Artnews, Sotheby’s failed attempt to sell a Jackson Pollock from Arne Glimcher’s collection for $50 million in a private auction may not be entirely unrelated to this development.

Werner Remm reports on the difficult conditions for the art market in Austria in Artmagazine: “Katrin Auer, cultural spokesperson for the SPÖ, who had already advocated for tax measures to benefit the art trade back in 2025, had to admit, however, that the chances of implementation had fallen to zero in recent weeks. Both Culture Minister and Vice-Chancellor Andreas Babler and Finance Minister Markus Marterbauer, both party colleagues of Auer, currently see no way of supporting the art trade, galleries and artists. ‘The door is closed,’ says Auer.”

The dépendance gallery in Brussels is closing. On its website, it bids farewell.

Marc Spiegler has published a ‘Stop the Thief!’-style essay in the New York Times (paywall), in which he observes that many galleries have focused on expansion and ever-greater reach: “Over the last two decades, contemporary art has become part of pop culture, with flashy museums opening in cities around the world, attracting selfie-taking tourists. Art fairs proliferated, and sometimes, as with Art Basel Miami Beach, became cultural events in their own right, attracting celebrities and plenty of media attention. The problem is that the art-selling business itself hasn’t kept pace with the hype. More museums and biennials mean more exhibitions that galleries have to support. Participating in fairs involves built-in costs that don’t always pay off. There simply aren’t enough collectors – especially new collectors – to make the figures add up in this supersized art world.” Who was it, during precisely this period, who was head of Art Basel and who, at every opportunity, claimed that the Art Basel fairs brought the best art by the best artists from the best galleries to the best collectors and the best institutions everywhere? It is somewhat surprising that someone should be criticising the very system that he himself helped shape in a key position.

Half of the women in middle management in the art world were planning to leave the industry within the next five years, according to Margaret Carrigan’s summary of the findings from the report “Hardwiring Change: Buying Back Time” by Artnet and the Association of Women in the Arts (AWITA) on Artnet.