Kobel's
Art Weekly

Kobel's Art Weekly 42 2026

This is the final edition of Kobel’s Art Week in English. All major browsers now offer high-quality translation of entire web pages. A right-click is all it takes!

With great conviction, the Art Basel and UBS Survey of Global Collecting 2026 (PDF) claims: “Generation Z spends the most on art”. To put this into perspective: Gen Z refers to the age group of 15 to 30-year-olds. The somewhat skewed view of the world that the report may convey is also reflected in the coverage of it, for example by Brian Boucher for Artnews or Carlie Porterfield for the Art Newspaper (possibly behind a paywall). Jan Kohlhaas captures the tone of most press reports in the Handelsblatt of 9 October: “The shift is particularly evident among Generation Z. In 2025 and the first half of 2026, they invested on average more than twice as much in fine art as older comparison groups.” Ursula Scheer writes in the FAZ: “The willingness to part with money for new discoveries has generally declined. People cling to the tried and tested when the global and economic situation appears precarious. Accordingly, only one per cent of the ‘high net worth individuals’ surveyed – those with more than one million dollars in liquid assets – spent more than one million dollars on a single work of art in the first half of 2026. However, of those who did make purchases in this price bracket, almost half belonged to Gen Z. Buyers in this age group spent more than five times as much on jewellery as their parents’ generation.” Anyone with just over a million in liquid assets is unlikely to invest the entire sum in a single work of art, and what new discovery actually costs over a million dollars? Michael Rasch attempts to put this into perspective in the NZZ (paywall): “UBS and Art Basel have been working together for decades. The bank is a world-leading provider of wealth management services for wealthy and ultra-wealthy private clients. As such, UBS has a natural affinity with what is presumably the most important group of buyers of expensive works of art. At the end of the second quarter, UBS managed total assets of 7.3 trillion dollars. Many art collectors come from wealthy families and are therefore likely to have inherited a large portion of their wealth. Accordingly, according to the study, family is the most important reason for entering the world of collecting.” I’ve set out my thoughts on the report for Monopol.

I’ve obviously stirred things up a bit with my reports from Vienna. After German, Austrian and international media had already picked up on the story, Kate Brown delves deeper into the matter in the English-language edition of Monopol: “To be sure, these are four different decisions by four different dealers. Together, though, they offer a petri dish for examining how the market is changing globally. Yet this is also Vienna, a city known for relatively low rents, incredible museums, government support, an educated public, and wealth. Given the timing, it raises the question: does Vienna have anything to do with it?”

Even Brita Sachs’s tour of Munich’s galleries for the FAZ is peppered with a dig at Vienna: “Exhibitions of this calibre enrich Munich’s autumn art season, which once again disproves the city’s stubbornly persistent reputation for being sedate and complacent, even in its art districts. Whilst the local scene may have looked enviously towards Vienna just a few years ago, the wave of gallery closures now sweeping through Vienna has so far largely spared the Bavarian metropolis. However, Vinh Thang of Galerie Nouveaux deuxdeux is unlikely to be the only one who feels there is a lack of young local collectors.”

Susanne Rohringer has taken a tour of some of the Viennese galleries participating in Curated By for Artmagazine.

The Austrian government’s Art and Culture Report (PDF) for the year 2025 is now available. According to a press release, the Federal Ministry of Art and Culture puts the federal government’s total budget for the promotion of art and culture at 623,193 million euros. Of this, 181,494,000 euros went towards funding the arts across all disciplines and 441,699,000 euros towards cultural funding, such as the basic subsidy for federal theatres and museums. Accordingly, funding for galleries has fallen, although funding for international activities does in fact benefit galleries, whilst domestic funding, on the other hand, benefits museums. Whilst funding for international art fairs was scaled back from 575,000 euros in 2024 to 527,000 euros, domestic funding was hit particularly hard. Instead of 750,000 euros, only 547,500 euros were available in 2024. Federal government art acquisitions in the fields of visual arts and photography also fell sharply. Instead of the previous €297,000, only €257,000 was spent. The grants for individual major projects alone are sufficient to match this level of economic support for an entire sector and public museums. For example, 203,492 euros were allocated to the Venice Biennale in the 2025 budget. Phileas – The Austrian Office for Contemporary Art received 750,000 euros, whilst Westlicht – Association for the Promotion of Photography received 120,000 euros.

Farah Nayeri discusses the sometimes contrasting developments in London’s art scene in the New York Times: “London’s art scene is a tale of two contrasting cities: one that can host the sale of over half a billion dollars’ worth of artworks in a single evening, and another where high-profile galleries go bust. Things were more upbeat 23 years ago, when the Frieze Art Fair began: the city’s contemporary art scene was booming, spurred on by the opening of Tate Modern in 2000 and the success of a new generation of artists known as the Young British Artists. When assessing the current outlook, “you can’t say it’s fantastic,” said Iwan Wirth, president and co-founder of Hauser & Wirth, one of the world’s largest art dealerships, in a telephone interview. “But it’s also wrong to say it’s not good.”

Art Cologne is gaining another satellite event in the form of Prospect Cologne, as I report in Artmagazine.

When auction reports speak of ‘selective bidding’, it is usually not a good sign. At the first autumn auctions in New York, Daniel Cassady and Brian Boucher are looking for positive signs for Artnews: ‘Taken together, the sales hardly amount to an all-clear for the art market.

But they do show buyers willing to compete again when the work and the price are right. And unlike a few years ago, when newly hot contemporary artists could seemingly leap from one auction record to another, much of the strongest bidding this time centred on artists whose markets have been built up over decades. For an art market that has spent much of the downturn learning the difference between demand and hype, that may be the more useful sign.”

Jeff Koons is cashing in on part of his art collection, reports Zachary Small in the New York Times (paywall): “Over the last few decades, Koons, who is 71, has assembled a small collection of artworks, mostly in his Upper East Side townhouse. He is now selling nine paintings by artists such as Picasso, Manet and the Dutch Golden Age painter Cornelis van Haarlem. The collection is estimated to fetch over $100 million, according to Christie’s, which declined to publicly identify the consignor.”

Katya Kazakina looks back on the bursting of a bubble in Artnet (maybe paywall):

“[Avery] Singer’s large-scale painting Happening sold for a record $5.3 million in 2021, the year in which her total auction sales reached a peak of $21.5 million, according to the Artnet Price Database. But then, the market’s floor fell out. [...] ‘Kundry’ offers a case study in how the market has shifted. Four years ago, the painting fetched $2.1 million at Sotheby’s New York. It returned to the block in May 2025 with an estimate of $1.4 million to $1.8 million but was withdrawn, suggesting it did not attract enough interest to meet the reserve price. The owner tried again this week, with lower expectations. Estimated at $600,000 to $800,000, the work sold for just $190,000 at Sotheby’s “Contemporary Curated” [...] That represents a 91 per cent loss in value over four years, before any selling costs.”

Maximilíano Durón reports the closure of the Brussels-based Super Dakota gallery in Artnews. The Hong Kong branch of the Thai gallery Tang has been dogged by allegations of irregularities, reports Hokhang Cheung in the Art Newspaper.