Kobel's Art Weekly

Kobel's Art Weekly 42 2025

Cut-throat competition has broken out among art fairs in the Persian Gulf. After Art Dubai initially positioned itself more internationally with a new management team, Art Basel announced the launch of a new fair in Qatar in May. The initial plan was to have around 50 galleries. In fact, almost 90 exhibitors are taking part in the premiere of Art Basel Qatar. Now Frieze has surprised everyone by taking over Abu Dhabi Art, as I report in Artmagazine. What makes the Gulf rally interesting is the fact that the state-owned Qatar Investment is itself involved in Frieze, as Maximilíano Durón reports in Artnews. This means that the Gulf state is indirectly competing with its own event. In addition to Qatar, Dubai and Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia is also trying to attract international galleries to the Arabian Peninsula with Art Week Riyadh. This cannot end well for everyone. The winner will probably be whoever throws around the most money. Until Tuesday, Qatar Airways is auctioning off five VIP passes for Art Basel Paris in exchange for air miles. A fly in the ointment: the tickets are only valid from Thursday, 23 October.

Frank Kurzhals attempts to find out why Hamburg does not have a major art fair for the Handelsblatt: "However, a fair is not yet in sight. Hanseatic galleries are cautious: minimising risk, growing slowly, learning from the mistakes of others and spending little money are the watchwords here. All Hanseatic virtues, at least according to the cliché. To this end, they are falling back on tried and tested methods. Following the Berlin model, something between Art Week and Gallery Weekend is to be created. But a lot of water will have to flow down the Elbe before these efforts become a veritable beacon."

Despite Patrick Drahi's toxic reign, Ursula Scheer sees light at the end of the tunnel for Sotheby's in the FAZ: "In fact, a lot has happened since the change of ownership at Sotheby's: the digitalisation of the business during the pandemic, followed by overheating, then the cooling of the market, hundreds of layoffs, the shift in focus to luxury goods and private sales, and the Middle East as a region of growing interest. These are all trends that are not limited to Sotheby's, but seem to be hitting less smoothly there than elsewhere – and with less convincing business results. Now, however, it looks like an autumn of triumphs, in which Sotheby's could generate decent sales and restore its reputation as an art auctioneer to its former glory."

The outlook for Hauser & Wirth is not looking good, reports Josh Spiro in the Financial Times (paywall): "Profits at the UK subsidiary of Hauser & Wirth, one of the world's largest and most influential art galleries, fell almost 90 per cent in 2024 as the global art market struggled with a multiyear slump. Hauser & Wirth, which represents artists Frank Bowling, George Condo and Cindy Sherman, said pre-tax profit fell to £1.2 million last year from £9.3 million in 2023, as revenue more than halved to £68 million, from £144 million the year before." Daniel Cassady refers to the FT article in Artnews.

Johannes Wendland fears the aging of the German gallery scene in the Handelsblatt: "A concern shared by Birgit Maria Sturm, managing director of the Federal Association of German Galleries and Art Dealers (BVDG). “Many of our members are already over 70 and simply continue to work,” she says. Factors such as growing bureaucratic requirements and economic risks would deter many descendants from taking over the gallery. Although there are also examples of successful succession arrangements, as Sturm says. An unclear succession arrangement in a gallery is a problem, not least for the artists. After all, it is by no means certain that a new representative will be found after the gallery closes. The same applies to artists' estates, which are often managed by galleries." However, like many art market studies, the IFSE study (PDF) published at the beginning of September, to which the author refers, suffers from the method of relying on questionnaires. It is probably not too far-fetched to assume that very young gallery owners have neither the resources nor the inclination to answer 69 questions. However, the fact that half of the respondents want to retire in the next ten years gives pause for thought.

Artnews lists what it considers to be the leading service providers in the art industry in the USA in twelve categories, from advisory to storage.

Representatives of some of these companies are quoted in an article by Francesca Aton and Karen K. Ho for Artnews on the impact of the fires in California on art insurance: "It may take just as long to determine how this disaster will affect the broader insurance market. As of late January, insurers were already seeking “large premium increases of between 30 and 50 per cent,” according to Knowledge at Wharton, a journal published by the University of Pennsylvania. Estimates of the insured losses have ranged from $20 to $44.5 billion, according to a UCLA Anderson School of Management report. While fine arts insurance experts told ARTnews they have reviewed similar reports published by the likes of Insurance Business journal, Morningstar DBRS, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, and Moody’s, they cautioned that these initial estimates and losses apply only to a couple of insurance carriers. [Risk Strategies Vice-President Christopher] Wise added that the underwriters he has spoken to are “dubious on the figures.”

Berlin tax advisor Florian Zadowsky points out the tax pitfalls of trading NFTs in the FAZ (paywall): "NFTs are often pure speculative objects. To date, there are collections in which individual NFTs are traded in the six-figure range. Although blockchain technology and NFTs in particular are complicated, the tax authorities also want to have their say. The Lower Saxony Finance Court recently dealt with such tokens in relation to VAT and subjected the sale of a large number of NFTs to VAT (judgment of 10 July 2025, 5 K 26/24). Taxpayers must now apply the judgment to their individual cases. In terms of VAT, they must check whether their specific sale of NFTs leads to VAT entrepreneur status." However, VAT is likely to be the least of the problems for those who have gambled with NFTs in the past. This is because the question of VAT is directly related to trading activity, which in turn is subject to income tax and may have to be registered as a business. This is something that not everyone who has made quick money with monkey pictures and the like is likely to be aware of.

However, according to a recent court ruling (PDF) in the US, NFTs are not securities, reports Margaret Attridge in Courthouse News Service: "A federal judge on Wednesday dismissed a class action filed by collectors of nonfungible tokens and cryptocurrency who claim that Yuga Labs, the company that created the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT, colluded with celebrities to artificially inflate prices of its products. U.S. District Judge Fernando Olguin, a Barack Obama appointee, found that the plaintiffs failed to show that the digital assets created by Yuga Labs, including the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection and cryptocurrency ApeCoin, were securities."

The art world should dare to be a little more Labubu, then it will also work with Gen Z and sales, believes Elisa Carollo from The Observer: "According to recent surveys, the global collectibles market has surpassed £496 billion in 2025. If the art world wants to avoid shrinking in both volume and financial weight as it struggles to broaden its buyer base, then making art more “collectible”—at multiple price points and across different stages of life—may be the only sustainable strategy for cultivating lifelong engagement from the next generation of buyers." This sounds like a call for the lowest common denominator in order to reach as many people as possible. But is it really desirable to fill museums with monumental versions of the merchandising knick-knacks from the museum shop?

From the press release announcing MoMA in New York's collaboration with toy company Mattel (Barbie, among others), we learn that the museum even has a Chief Retail Officer, Jesse Goldberg, who explains the expansion of the merchandise range with lofty goals: ‘By joining forces with Mattel Creations, we are inviting a generation of new audiences to experience the Museum's collection in ways that merge contemporary art with creative play and design innovation and allow them to spend time with artworks from the collection in new and interactive ways.’ Better a toy retailer than an arms dealer.

Bonham's is testing the market for works by TV legend Bob Ross. The auction house will soon be auctioning off a total of 30 works by the painter on behalf of and for the benefit of public broadcasting, which Donald Trump had withdrawn funding from, reports Karen K. Ho at Artnews.