The changing art market

A work by Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama installed at Place Vendôme (Paris), for FIAC, October 20, 2019. FRANCOIS GUILLOT / AFP

By: Jean-Pierre Boris Follow

11 mins

In Paris, a new contemporary art museum will be opened next week (May 22, 2021).

If all goes well, visitors will soon be able to discover the collection of billionaire François Pinault, installed in the building that once housed the stock exchange, the one where agricultural products, wheat, corn and others were traded.

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This alliance of art and commerce provides us with the perfect introduction to a program devoted to the art market. A market we are talking about when a Picasso, a Van Gogh, a Jeff Koons break records at auctions in Paris or New York. But a market which is much larger than that and which, from Dakar to Beijing, from Moscow to New York, concerns millions of artists and gallery owners who are unevenly supported. Without forgetting art lovers, buyers, small or large collectors.

So these artists, these gallery owners, how are they doing today, in the midst of a pandemic?

Have revenues in this sector collapsed?

Are artists, painters, sculptors, installation authors having a hard time?

Have the galleries that sell them had to close shop?

Or, on the contrary, have they taken advantage of the liquidity of the stimulus plans?

Are new players taking advantage of the situation to flourish?

In short, are we witnessing a change in the art market?

These are the questions that we will ask, over the course of this program, to the four guests that I present to you.

Xin Dong Cheng

 is a collector and one of the main promoters of contemporary art in his gallery in Beijing.

He is also a great connoisseur of France, of which he is also a national. 

Marion Papillon

 runs the gallery that bears her name and which has existed for thirty-two years.

She is also president of the Professional Committee of Art Galleries. 

François-Xavier Trancart

 is one of the founders of the Artsper internet platform which offers a digital extension to traditional galleries.

Nathalie Moureau

 is Professor of Economics at Paul Valéry Montpellier 3 University. She is also treasurer of FRAC Occitanie

.

 She is interested in the art market to which she devotes reports and books such as the one published ten years ago at La Découverte, which is simply called "the art market".

Reports: 

► 

The Parisian art market is facing the Covid pandemic and is adapting.

We see how with this report

Eco from here Eco from elsewhere

signed Anne Verdaguer in the world of Parisian galleries.

REP / Paris Galleries

► In Senegal, the art market is booming.

Dakar, the capital, was to host its 14th biennial in 2020 which has been postponed, without yet having a new date scheduled.

A hard blow for artists, galleries and curators.

Yet four new galleries and spaces recently opened during the coronavirus pandemic, a sign of a resilient market.

This is an

Eco from here

report

Eco from elsewhere

by Théa Ollivier in Dakar. 

REP / Dynamism of the art market in Senegal

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