New York’s Billion-Dollar May Art Auctions Could Actually Be a Success
With a down art market and broader economic uncertainty, expectations are low, but quality is high.
Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Untitled from 1981, which carries an estimate of $10 million to $15 million.
Source: Sotheby'sIt’s hard to imagine less auspicious conditions for May’s New York auction season. The art market is limping, hobbled by high prices and low morale, which managed to sink even lower as Trump’s tariff war seemed to bulldoze whatever green shoots emerged during fairs and auctions earlier this year.
“After the Trump election, we felt that a lot of the volatility and guesswork that had been plaguing the market was kind of settled business,” says Lisa Dennison, the executive vice president and chairman of the Americas at Sotheby’s. “Everything was kind of going in the right direction.” But 100 days later, she says, “the kind of disruption and volatility that we saw continued, and markets do not like uncertainty. So that’s been a bit of a challenge.” (Currently, contemporary art seems to be exempt from tariffs, although it is certainly not exempt from their broader economic repercussions.)