As many of you may have heard, the art biz hasn’t been doing so well. Ahead of Art Basel Miami Beach, very smart LA gallerist Hannah Hoffman explained to me that there was an “erosion of trust” in the market among collectors; they felt they had been duped into investing in over-hyped young artists whose work turned out to net negative returns. And since the Federal Reserve raised interest rates in 2022, thus ending the ability of the uber-wealthy to borrow gigantic sums of money basically for free, cash just hasn’t been flowing like it used to. On top of all this, we’re also still reeling from crushing election results that we seem to take great pains to never talk about.
Now, who wants to hear about the parties?
In a nutshell: near-freezing weather with an art world at different stages of disillusionment. The optimists arrived with the belief that the market had bounced back since Art Basel Paris and the US presidential election, and that the parties with half-empty dancefloors would fill up as the week progressed. By the end, however, reality had set in: the crowds would remain small and not particularly in the mood to celebrate, and on Saturday at least one dealer was seen sobbing outside of NADA, not having sold a thing. I went to Miami with four writing assignments so I could take the commercial art world’s temperature in person, unhindered by the lenses of PR and toxic positivity. My biggest takeaway from the week is that disillusionment is a good thing; you have to shatter your delusions in order to see things as they really are.
