The Venice Biennale used to be, along with Germany's quinquennial Documenta, the Olympics of the art world—it even gives medals (prizes) for a winning show and country.

Now in a time when we can bet on anything online, the odds of the US pavilion with sculptor Alma Allen winning are at 1,000,000,000,000 to one, or maybe worse.

It's not that the work is bad—it’s fine, a bit vanilla—but if you imagine all of the greatest artists who were passed over for such a platform, well…

The politics of this year's show are unique—there was little appetite for most artists and sponsoring institutions to apply. The organizing charity, The American Arts Conservancy, seems to have been created in July of this year, just for this. Not that Executive Director Jenni Parido’s experience running the now shuttered Feed Pet Purveyor for 9 years is necessarily disqualifying, but is this the best of the best? And they probably won’t be able to say “Made in the USA” as the works will come from the artist’s studio in Mexico…

The share of HNWIs who bought work in 2024-25 by an artist that was new to them, per Art Basel & UBS's latest Survey of Global Collecting. The finding isn’t just a significant increase from the 2023-24 edition of the study, when 58% of survey respondents said they’d acquired work from a new discovery; it also represents the highest share achieved since the annual survey began in 2022.

On one hand, the data reinforces one of the most popular refrains about buyer behavior in challenging portions of the art market cycle: that collectors overwhelmingly respond to macroeconomic uncertainty by taking a “flight to quality”—that is, by retreating from unproven artists and purchasing tried-and-tested names, from the Impressionists and Modernists to Warhol and Basquiat. Of the survey-takers’ total spending on artists they themselves weren’t previously familiar with, the largest share (44%) went toward those considered “established or top-tier” by the industry at large.

On the other hand, the second-largest share of these acquisitions (35%) were of works by “new and emerging” artists. This complicates the “flight to quality” concept somewhat. Even in the midst of what has been universally acknowledged as a softening of the art market over the past 18 to 24 months, a serious share of HNWIs still actively sought out pieces by talent that was not only new to them but new to almost everyone else too.

The same has been true in every other correction or downturn this century. It doesn’t mean the flight to quality is bogus. But it does mean that, even in the toughest times, some collectors are still more than happy to book a different itinerary.

—Tim Schneider / The Gray Market

This question was ASKed as part of artist Rirkrit Tiravanija’s class ‘Making Without Objects’ at Columbia University, held at The Baer Faxt HQ. Next week, we’ll have Part II to the question answered by Rirkrit himself, so stay tuned.

Mino, Shaina and Jasphy ASKed: What is the relationship between artists and collectors, what should it look like?

Josh Baer: Your job as an artist is not to explain your art or talk about your art. Your job is to make the art. That's the job of intermediaries like a gallery or museum curator. Many great artists never talk about their own art, and that's fine, so there’s no need to make an artist statement. People will either bond with the work because of the object rather than the “story”, or let the critic, the curator or the galleries tell that story.

Now, from the collector's vantage point, getting to know the artist and what they think is often maybe not even valuable, but some like to be involved in the storytelling straight from the horse's mouth, so to speak—to hear about the artist’s personal history, but that’s not what it’s about. It's not a story, it's art. If you want to write a story, write a story. If you want to read a story, read a story. The message often sent from auction houses and galleries is that we are storytellers, but that’s not why we do this. Sometimes it’s useful to have a way into the work, sometimes you need a cultural reference or context to understand something—but that’s backstory, not a story.

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