We launched our members-only section Artnet News Pro to offer you the kind of stories you couldn't get anywhere else.
In May, we made a big move here at Artnet News. We launched Artnet News Pro—a new, members-only section—to provide readers with the tools they need to navigate the high-stakes terrain of the art market.
Since then, thousands of the art world’s most passionate denizens—from leading dealers to world-renowned artists to upstart strivers to titans of industry—have signed up to stay in the loop about everything from the new names popping on the scene to the nitty-gritty dynamics propelling the biggest market moves.
Our goal was to offer the kind of inside-baseball, analyst-caliber coverage that would otherwise be impractical for a site like ours to produce at scale. Think of it this way: for just one article, a Pro reporter might meet with half a dozen sources, interview a dozen people, and work with our Business Intelligence Team to pull and analyze more than a decade’s worth of auction-sales data.
If you haven’t taken the plunge yet, allow us to whet your appetite. Below, we’ve pulled together a selection of our team’s favorite Pro stories of 2022. If you like what you see but haven’t subscribed yet, you can become a member here.
Installation view of Aicon Art Gallery at Art Dubai 2021. Courtesy of Art Dubai.
“More than 100 respondents to the survey identified as gallery directors, the majority of whom were making more than $100,000, with a few top earners reaching toward the millions. By comparison, those who identified as gallery assistants hit a ceiling of $35,000—about 30 percent less than what researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology define as a living wage in New York State. Over a 40-hour week, the sum comes in under $17 an hour.”
A view of Monte-Carlo in Monaco. (Photo by Toni Anne Barson/Getty Images)
“’Monaco is sort of public-private,’ one art-world insider told me. ‘It is somewhat confidential here.’ In other words, never mind the back room when you’ve got a place like this—it is, essentially, an entire city-state that doubles as a VIP lounge.”
Spring Sunshine (1865), a work said to be by Claude Monet, is being offered in an auction by Innovation Without Borders for $2 million alongside an associated NFT. Image courtesy Innovation Without Borders
“The work’s authenticity remains an open question. Several Impressionist experts we consulted said that most major auction houses wouldn’t handle the work. And the Wildenstein Plattner Institute, which published Monet’s four-volume catalogue raisonné under the guidance of the late scholar and dealer Daniel Wildenstein, said it had no plans to insert the painting into future editions of the publication.”
Sir Frank Bowling, 2021. Photo by Sacha Bowling.
“Hauser is also playing a long game. They are encouraging the family to build a core collection of top-quality works from across Bowling’s career and working to ascertain the whereabouts of those that are missing. To keep the auction market under control, they are considering purchasing back works headed to the block and asking Bowling to hold back others from sale entirely, including the series he is working on now.”
Guests during the Art Basel Hong Kong at the convention and exhibition centre, the exhibition is open to the public from May 21st to May 23rd. (Photo by Miguel Candela/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
“They are young. They are rich. They pair Audemars Piguet watches with Vans sneakers. And they are buying art—a lot of it. A new generation of Asian collectors not only salvaged auction sales from a potentially disastrous decline, but also has the potential to disrupt the hierarchy of tastemaking in a global art market that has long been dominated by the West.”
The famous 1909 Honus Wagner tobacco card, considered the “Holy Grail” of baseball cards. (Photo by Bob Chamberlin/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
“Art advisor Anita Heriot unwittingly found herself giving a crash course on the topic to her new British colleagues while getting them up to speed on the portfolio of one of her top clients. The collector’s holdings included works by Mark Rothko and Andy Warhol, but the most valuable and fastest appreciating asset was a trove of trading cards.”
A general view during the Louis Vuitton And Yayoi Kusama Collaboration Unveiling at Louis Vuitton Maison on July 10, 2012 in New York City. Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/WireImage.
“The collaboration between Yayoi Kusama and Louis Vuitton helped towards establishing her in the art-world firmament. While the bags she created for the brand were being sold, her original paintings were being presented on the VIP floor of the Vuitton store on Bond Street in London. I was particularly fascinated by little plastic figurines of the artist herself. I was desperate to get my hands on one and used all my contacts, to no avail. I was told that they would all be destroyed once the display was over.”
A promotional image for Masterworks’s offering of shares in Andy Warhol’s 1 Colored Marilyn (Reversal Series) (1979). Courtesy of Masterworks.
“The platform’s value proposition is to convert physical artworks into intangible investment vehicles. Shareholders outsource the care, promotion, and resale to Masterworks in exchange for an annual administrative fee. It’s a way to allocate part of an investment portfolio to fine art while avoiding both the logistical downsides—and the psychic upsides—of actually living with art. But whether Masterworks offers a wise investment opportunity is a more complex matter.”
Emily Ratajakowski, Buying Myself Back: A Model for Redistribution (2021). Photo courtesy Christie’s.
“Her post pointed back to her viral (and truly excellent) story in the Cut from last September, in which she details how Prince—a “fancy artist worth a lot more money than I am”—appropriated several of her Instagram posts and sold them as his own works a half-decade ago. As it turns out, that’s not the full story. Why? Because what Ratajkowski did not say, and which Wet Paint can exclusively reveal, is that she actually commissioned the Prince portrait in 2015.”
It’s raining men, and money in Frida’s case.
“The solution was to conduct a closed auction amongst a handpicked clique of interested parties. Not a sealed bid—but rather a full-on, real-time, live auction. The result: a whopping $130 million-plus achieved for the work, Me and My Parrot, from 1941. Word is that the painting went to an Asian collector, further substantiating a major market migration of Western art to the region.”
Yuga Labs LLC, 101 Bored Ape Yacht Club (est. 2021). Courtesy of Sotheby’s.
“If you are an NFT owner, you also get a few other perks, like access to ‘swamp club for apes’ and a member’s-only graffiti board, according to the Bored Ape Yacht Club website. People who own Bored Apes tend to post the avatars on their Twitter profiles, like a status symbol.”
