A Year at Two Speeds

On May 18, 2026, at Christie’s in New York, Jackson Pollock’s Number 7A sold for $181.2 million, about three times the artist’s previous record. Sixteen days later the blue-chip gallery Pace announced that it would stop representing 50 of its artists and reduce its staff by a fifth. Both things are the art market in 2026.

The numbers at the top are not in dispute. The three big auction houses sold $6.8 billion of art at auction in the first half of the year, up 70% on the same period of 2025 and their best first half since 2022, according to ArtTactic. That followed a year in which global sales rose 4% to an estimated $59.6 billion, by the count of the Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report, written by the economist Clare McAndrew.

The same report shows where the growth came from. Auction lots above $10 million rose 30% by value in 2025. Lots under $50,000 fell 2%. Dealers, who still account for the larger part of the trade at $34.8 billion, grew 2%. Online sales dropped to $9.2 billion, the lowest figure since 2019. Artnet News calls the result a K-shaped market: one arm up, one arm down, and the letter’s spine is where most galleries live.

This report follows the year in order: the salerooms, the galleries, the fairs, the biennales. It then names five forces behind them, each with an essay of its own, and ends with what the floor in Miami Beach might show in December. One caution applies throughout. Auction totals are published by the houses and fair sales are reported by the dealers who made them. Both are useful. Neither is audited.

The recovery announced itself early. Sales at Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Phillips rose 64% in the first quarter to $1.7 billion, the strongest first quarter since 2016, The Art Newspaper reported. In London on March 4, Sotheby’s evening sale of modern and contemporary art made £131 million with fees, more than double the equivalent sale a year earlier, with 98% of lots sold and a Francis Bacon self-portrait at £16 million, by the same paper’s account.

New York in May settled the question. The three houses took about $2.5 billion across the fortnight, and the evening sales alone made about $2.1 billion, more than twice the total of May 2025, according to Artnet News and Apollo. The collection of S.I. Newhouse brought $630.8 million for 16 works at Christie’s. It held the Pollock, and Constantin Brancusi’s Danaïde at $107.6 million, also a record. Mark Rothko’s No. 15 (Two Greens and Red Stripe), from the collection of Agnes Gund, made $98.4 million. At Sotheby’s, a second Rothko, from the collection of Robert Mnuchin, made $85.8 million.

What sold was old, rare, and owned by someone famous. Estates did the work. In June, Sotheby’s London offered the collection of Joe Lewis in what was reported as the most valuable single-owner sale ever held in Europe; the total has been given as between $390 million and $406 million depending on the source, as The Art Newspaper’s half-year report shows. By July, Christie’s had reported first-half sales of $4.5 billion, up 71%, and Sotheby’s $4.4 billion, up 58%, which it called a first-half record.

Discipline has a shape. Bank of America’s fall update puts Impressionist and modern auction sales up 133% in the first half, and sales of what it calls Young Contemporary art down 88% from their 2022 peak. The newest art, which carried the last boom, is the part of the market that has not come back. In Hong Kong, the autumn sales in late September passed HK$2 billion, about $255 million, with a 1984 Basquiat on top, Artnet News reported.

The houses also charged more for the privilege. Sotheby’s raised its buyer’s premium on February 13 to 28% on the lower tier, reversing the simpler structure it introduced in 2024, as the Antiques Trade Gazette recorded. Phillips, Christie’s, and Bonhams followed during the year. Artnet News read the rises as one more sign of the split: the trophies make the headlines, and the lower-value lots carry more of the fees.

The season is not over. On November 18, Sotheby’s New York will offer 12 works from the Blaquier-Arrieta collection with an estimate of about $450 million, including a Van Gogh estimated at about $180 million, according to The Art Newspaper. Miami opens two weeks later, and will inherit whatever mood that sale leaves behind.

Galleries had a different year. The Pace announcement of early June was the largest single retrenchment: 50 artists out of roughly 130, and staff down from about 250 to 200. Among those leaving were teamLab, the estate of David Goldblatt, and Grada Kilomba, The Art Newspaper reported. The gallery’s chief executive did not present it as a bad quarter.

Others shrank more quietly. Luhring Augustine is closing the Tribeca branch it opened in 2020, Artnet News reported on October 2. In London, Beers Gallery closed at the end of August after 14 years and Sid Motion closes this month after 10, by the same outlet’s count; Tiwani Contemporary, of London and Lagos, announced its closure in May after 15. Gagosian is reported to be giving up its spaces in Basel and in London’s Burlington Arcade Unconfirmed: three outlets carried the story in August, but the reports could be read here by headline only. Coverage of the past two years, including Monocle’s survey of the market, also lists Blum, Clearing, Marlborough, and Sperone Westwater among the closed.

The trade’s answer has been to combine. Pace, the dealer Emmanuel Di Donna, and the former Sotheby’s executive David Schrader formed a joint secondary-market business, announced in December 2025, which took its own stand at Art Basel in June. Art Basel Paris will open this month with a record 12 shared booths. Art Dubai, forced into a smaller edition by war, replaced stand fees with a capped share of sales.

The case against gloom is in the same data. Fairs produced 35% of dealer turnover in 2025, up four points. New buyers accounted for 49% of dealer sales. And 43% of dealers told the McAndrew survey they expected a better 2026. Whether they got one is a question for the next edition of the report.

The calendar gained two fairs in the Gulf in a year when dealers complained of having too many. Art Basel opened in Doha in February. Frieze opens in Abu Dhabi in November. Between them a regional war closed the Strait of Hormuz, postponed Art Dubai by a month, and thinned the European contingent in Hong Kong.

The reports from the floors were consistent enough to summarize in one line: good sales for expensive, familiar things, slower going for the rest, and a visible move toward lower prices by September. The table gives each fair’s own lesson. Sale prices are those reported by the galleries.

Two details deserve more than a table cell. In Basel, more than 190 galleries held works back from the PDF previews that dealers send to clients before a fair, under a scheme the organizers called Basel Exclusive, as Artnet News described. The aim, plainly, was to make attendance matter again. And in Doha, the solo presentations looked so much like an exhibition that Art Basel’s chief executive, Noah Horowitz, reminded The Art Newspaper that everything was for sale.

One cancellation tells the other half. Taipei Dangdai called off its 2026 edition, citing a contracting market, after its exhibitor list had fallen from more than 90 to about 50, Artnet News reported. New fairs are opening in the Gulf while a mid-sized one in Asia has gone dark.

The 61st Venice Biennale opened on May 9 without its curator and without a jury. Koyo Kouoh, who conceived In Minor Keys, died in May 2025; her team of five realized it. On April 22 the international jury said it would not consider participants from countries whose leaders face charges at the International Criminal Court, which meant Russia and Israel. Eight days later all five jurors resigned. The Biennale scrapped the Golden and Silver Lions for the year and created two Visitors’ Lions, to be chosen by ticket-holders and announced on November 22, as Hyperallergic reported.

The artists then declined the substitute. More than 70 of them and 22 national pavilions withdrew from consideration, among them Walid Raad, Laurie Anderson, Alfredo Jaar, and Yto Barrada, according to The Art Newspaper. Russia’s pavilion reopened after two absences, to a protest by Pussy Riot. A march and a one-day strike on May 8 closed several national pavilions, NPR reported. The exhibition itself drew measured reviews. Ben Luke of The Art Newspaper gave it three and a half stars and found the Arsenale stronger than the Central Pavilion. Attendance over the preview days was up 4% on 2024, by the Biennale’s count.

Venice was the loudest case of a pattern. In Sydney, remarks by a performer at the opening concert cost the biennale a sponsor. In Gwangju, the naming of a Taiwan pavilion was disputed before the doors opened. South Africa’s culture minister canceled the country’s Venice pavilion in January, and the work was shown in the city independently. In each case the argument about who may take part arrived before anyone had seen the art.

Read the titles in a row and a common subject appears: In Minor Keys, Rememory, Dakar’s arts of repair. Mourning, memory, and mending were the year’s themes, and several exhibitions used buildings to match, with Manifesta in disused churches and Sydney in a power station. Jenny Wu, reviewing Venice for ArtReview, described a protest with fine-print slogans and no concrete demands. The quiet was a choice, and some critics took it for evasion.

The salerooms and the exhibitions spent the year looking in the same direction for different reasons. Collectors paid records for the art of the past while curators mourned it. The culture essay follows that thread, and the political essay has the full Venice chronology.

Five pressures shaped the year. Each has its own essay; these are the short versions.

Art Basel Miami Beach is the last major fair of the year and the first test after the November auctions. It cannot settle an argument about the market in three public days, and dealer-reported sales should be read with the usual reserve. It can still offer evidence. Five things are worth watching on the floor.

• The middle of the price list. At the Armory Show in September, most reported sales were under $100,000. If the same holds in a hall where the largest stands cost six figures to rent, the two-speed market has reached Miami. If mid-priced work by living artists sells briskly, the gap may be closing.
• The Americans. Dealers in Basel noticed fewer American collectors in June. Miami is their home fair. A full hall on the preview days would suggest the absence was about travel; a thin one would suggest something else.
• The smaller floor. The fair has cut its footprint by about 12% and its main sector to 204 galleries, and its director calls this refinement. Whether galleries report better conversations and better sales in a tighter hall will influence what other fairs do in 2027. The detail is on the fairs page.
• The second Zero 10. The digital sector drew crowds in 2025 with robot dogs. Its second Miami edition, Generation, has a museum curator in Karen Archey and 19 projects. Sales to collectors who also buy painting would mean more than queues.
• Who is not there. Kurimanzutto, Night Gallery, and Gallery Wendi Norris are among those not returning, according to Artnet News and The Art Newspaper. The galleries that took their places, more than 30 of them new to the fair, are the better guide to where dealers think the next buyers are.

None of this is a forecast. The same fair in December 2025 opened on a wave of optimism from the New York auctions, and the year that followed was the one described above.

A fair that is choosing to be smaller has been small before, and has been interrupted before. Four earlier Decembers put this one in proportion.