In a call with journalists on Tuesday morning, Christie’s CEO Guillaume Cerutti acknowledged a “challenging environment for the art market,” and reported that the house expects its total auction sales for 2024 to be $4.2 billion, a 16-percent drop from 2023’s $5 billion haul.

That environment was made all the more challenging for the house in May, when its website was hacked right before its marquee sales, as Artnet reported, though it still managed to hold those auctions.

Cerutti and his team said that the second half of the year was far stronger than the first half, voiced optimism about 2025, and emphasized the positive. Private sales were up 41 percent, for instance, jumping from $1.1 billion to $1.5 billion—their highest level since 2020, at the height of the pandemic.

“It has been close to being the second-best year ever for private sales at Christie’s,” said Adrien Meyer, the global head of that business. “Why? It’s probably because we are in such uncertain and volatile times. Uncertainty triggers the need for a level of reassurance and that’s what private sales provide.” Meyer also mentioned the appeal of buying “the freshness of the work which is not known to the public. This applies to the masterpiece level in a significant way.”

Christie’s overall total, $5.7 billion, is down 6 percent from the $6.1 billion it reported for 2023.

In the first half of 2024, Christie’s had just $2.1 billion in sales, down 22 percent from the $2.7 billion it hauled in during the same period in 2023, when the art market was already contracting. The 2022 total for the period was far higher: $3.5 billion.

Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Untitled, which sold for $22,950,000 at Christie’s, on November 21, 2024 in New York City. Photo: Selcuk Acar/Anadolu via Getty Images

Christie’s was able to boast of selling the year’s priciest lot, René Magritte’s L’Empire des Lumieres (1954), which was auctioned from the Mica Ertegun Collection in New York in November for $121 million. It also sold the most valuable jewel of the year, when the Eden Rose, a 10-carat pink diamond, went for $13.4 million in the city in June.

Frances Belin, president of Christie’s Asia, said that its business in the region also strengthened in the second half of the year. “Global buying of Asian collectors in the first half was 22 percent of global sales,” Belin said. “In the second half it was slightly over 30 percent.” Sales in Asia were down eight percent year-on-year, totaling $725 million (HK$5.7 billion).

Notably, sales in Paris, where many galleries have been opening branches post-Brexit, and where Art Basel Paris has become a star attraction, climbed 24 percent, to $415 million (€384 million). Meanwhile, London sales dropped roughly 4.5 percent, to $787 million (£617 million).

The house saw a 14-percent increase in buyers from the Middle East, it said. In September, Christie’s announced that it was opening a location in Riyadh.

A class action suit filed in late May by Christie’s clients following the hack, alleging breach of implied contract and violation of privacy, was recently settled, the house confirmed. Terms of that settlement have not been disclosed, and the house said it would not comment further.