THIS WEEK'S HOT TOPIC
It’s been a long time since art of the American West was fashionable. The genre’s common themes of exceptionalism, frontier violence, and masculinity stand at odds with a collecting culture that has, in recent years, skewed toward the progressive and multicultural. But times are different now; Trump is back in the oval office, and there is a growing sense of fatigue around political correctness and all things "woke.” It’s the country’s 250th anniversary—and people want to celebrate it.
Last week, a Christie's two-session sale of Western Art from the collection of businessman William I. Koch crushed expectations, bringing in a combined $84.1m USD with 95% sold by lot. It set a new record for a single-owner sale of Western Art, and new auction records for five artists—Cyrus Edwin Dallin, Alfred Jacob Miller, Charles Marion Russell, David Mann, and Frederic Remington—were notched along the way.
So successful was this sale that Tylee Abbott, Christie’s Senior Vice President and Head of American Art, called it a “once-in-a-lifetime” event.
According to Abbott, the revival of Western Art has quietly been picking up steam since the pandemic, as easterners were buying more and more real estate out west—manifest destiny for the Covid age. The interesting part? The age of those driving the trend. Whereas the Western Art market has traditionally been synonymous with the 70-plus crowd, Abbott told The Baer Faxt that he has seen a “steady increase” in younger buyers over the last five years.
“I would say a third of the participants in last week's sale were sub-60, which is really exciting and compelling,” Abbot added. “But even below that, we're seeing nice participation from the 30-45 year old range too.”
Why have these particular demographics taken a shine to Western Art of late? It’s hard to say, though we’ll have more information to work with after other auctions in this category—including Sotheby’s “The American West” sale, which took place over the weekend—report results. Stay tuned.
3…THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT INSURING YOUR COLLECTION
1
Once your collection grows beyond a few pieces on the wall, insurance becomes essential. Paintings, sculptures, and works on paper are vulnerable—not just to theft or accidents, but increasingly to environmental risks as well. To insure your collection, you’ll need a formal appraisal. Artworks don’t come with insurance or warranties when you buy them, and most insurers require an appraisal report from a licensed fine art appraiser before issuing coverage. Some insurance companies can recommend appraisers; others offer little guidance. The Appraisers Association of America maintains a directory of qualified professionals, but to make things even more simple: if you work with an art advisor, they may already be licensed to provide appraisals.
2
Documentation matters more than most collectors realize. Keeping a clear archive of invoices, condition reports, and related paperwork makes the appraisal process faster, smoother, and often less expensive. When an appraiser visits your home or storage facility, they’ll photograph works, record dimensions, and create an insurance schedule that outlines your collection. For larger collections, specialized art database software can be useful, but a simple spreadsheet or shared document works perfectly well too. Knowing exactly what you own, and where it is, is foundational to insuring it properly.
3
Insurance value and market value are not the same thing. Insurance typically reflects a retail replacement value: what it would cost to replace the work through a gallery or comparable source, including associated fees. That number may differ significantly from what the work could fetch at auction or in a private sale. Still, insurance value can offer a general sense of fair market positioning. For recently-acquired pieces or works by emerging artists, the insured value often closely mirrors the purchase price. Over time, those figures may diverge—and that’s why periodic reappraisals matter.
A NUMBER TO KNOW
40%
The share of Phillips’s total auction sales that was generated by watches in 2025. The house, in association with Bacs & Russo, sold more than $290m worth of timepieces (with fees) last year, a serious chunk of the $725m worth of all art and collectibles (with fees) it moved under the hammer over that stretch.
There are two competing ways to think about these results. The first is that they complicate any designation of Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Phillips as the “Big Three” auction houses when it comes to art. Take out its $290m worth of watch sales, along with its sales of design objects and jewels, and Phillips sold less than $435m of artwork (with fees) across all of its auctions in 2025. (The house didn’t publicly report year-end sales figures for these other categories.) For comparison, Christie’s and Sotheby’s each rang up more than $500m in one evening during the marquee New York sales last November.
On the other hand, Phillips is the undisputed leader of the pack in the watch market. It has now surpassed $200m worth of timepiece sales at auction for five consecutive years—the first time an auction house has ever managed that feat, according to Phillips. Selling $290m of watches under the hammer also means the house trounced Sotheby’s (around $200m with fees) by nearly 50% and Christie’s (around $170m with fees) by nearly 75% within this category in 2025, per data from ArtTactic.
In short, last year’s watch results prove that every member of the Big Three deserves its perch at the top of the sector after all. We just have to remember to look beyond art to understand why.
—Tim Schneider / The Gray Market
ASK: ACCESS SOPHISTICATED KNOWLEDGE
A student from the Courtauld Institute of Art ASKed: What would you say to someone who wants to find a job or launch a company in the art world?
Josh Baer for NoReserve: Well, do your homework. Think of all the places in the art world. You might get a job, but would you want to work there if you don't like the art, the people, the magazine? That could be a real red flag. I'd rather you took a job being a maître d' and spend all your time looking until you found something that feels right.
You'll learn more quickly in a small space than you would in a big company where you sit in a cubicle. There are things you can do in your twenties to move around and try different jobs. Maybe you start by painting walls. You’ll need connections, which some people have and others don’t. For that, look local, look small, volunteer to do more.
Have your own question for the NoReserve team? Reply to this email or reach out to us on Instagram, @no.reserve. Readers whose submissions we choose get a special prize—six free months of The Baer Faxt.
2 MINUTES WITH…
In 2022, we sat down with Richard Armstrong, then the Director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York (now Director Emeritus after retiring that same year), to discuss what it was like for him growing up in Kansas City. Armstrong recalls his childhood encounters with the Kansas City Museum, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, and the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. He tells us about how these institutions’ collections were built and details the incredible patronage found in smaller regional cities like his former hometown. If you’d like to listen to the extended version, head ➡️ here.
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The Baer Faxt is back on the road! We’ll be in Riyadh this week for the opening of the Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale and Sotheby’s second sale in Saudi Arabia, then we’re off to Doha for the inaugural edition of Art Basel Qatar. If you’ll be there and would like to connect, drop us a line at [email protected] or simply reply to this email.
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