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Clare McAndrew, the economist who has for eight years written the widely read annual art market report put out by the European Fine Art Foundation, is shifting her allegiance to Art Basel. There, she will also put out an annual paper taking the temperature of the art market. The news comes just as the Art Basel fair in Switzerland is in previews.
The new report will be published jointly with Swiss bank UBS, which has partnered with the fair for over two decades. It will debut in March 2017, timed to the Art Basel in Hong Kong fair.
McAndrew heads up the Dublin-based research and consulting firm Arts Economics, which she founded in 2005. She holds a PhD in economics from Trinity College Dublin.
The European Fine Art Foundation (TEFAF) organizes a renowned Old Master and antiquities fair in Maastricht, the Netherlands, which takes place annually in March. (It’s also expanding to New York with two fairs, the first taking place in October.)
McAndrews’s latest report, compiled from a survey of dealers, auction houses, and collectors, found that the global art market reached sales of $63.8 billion in 2015, falling seven percent from $68.2 billion in 2014. It was the first year since 2011 that the report found a decline in the size of the art market. It also argued that the number of transactions was down from the previous year, to 38.1 million.