Writer Olav Velthuis has a piece on the state of the art market this week in The New York Times, noting the challenges and threats posed by the current fair system. “The fairs have existed since the late 1960s, but only in the last two decades have they developed into the market’s potentate,” he says. “Almost half of all gallery sales are nowadays conducted at the fairs, up 16 percentage points from 2010. Gallery owners on average participate in five fairs a year. Not because they like them so much as because they have to.”
Read more at NYT