Art Industry Trends 2024

1. Nearly half of galleries implemented cost-cutting measures to increase profitability in 2023.

The cost of running a gallery increased in 2023 for the vast majority of our survey respondents: 42% said that operating costs had increased slightly in 2023, followed by 32% that said costs had risen significantly. Just 14% said that they’d experienced no change.

Almost half of respondents (48%) have taken cost-cutting measures. Of those respondents, notably, 39% said that they are doing fewer art fairs. The cost of participating in art fairs was among the main themes of Artsy’s inaugural Art Fair Report from earlier this year, where a majority (56%) of surveyed galleries that do not participate in art fairs said that the cost of participating in fairs was the highest barrier to entry.

When asked to select how they are finding savings, 44% of respondents reported cutting day-to-day administrative expenses, followed by marketing budgets (34%), and a reduction in workforce (19%). Of those who reduced their workforce, the highest proportion (50%) said that gallery assistants were the positions they cut.

2. Half of galleries offered discounts on only some of their sales in 2023.

In a competitive and uncertain art market, offering increased discounts to collectors has been a point of discussion within the art trade. Despite this, just 22% of respondents said they offered more discounts in 2023 than in 2022, while 50% said they offered discounts at roughly the same rate.

Half of our respondents reported that their galleries offered discounts on less than 50% of the artwork sold in 2023, with 32% saying that they offered discounts on less than 25% of works, followed by 18% that said they offered discounts on 25–49% of sales. Just a quarter said that they offered discounts on more than 50% of their artwork sales, and 18% said they didn’t offer discounts at all.

According to the largest proportion of respondents who offered discounts (36%), the average discount on artwork sales was 10–14%; 28% said their discounts were less than 10%; 19% said they offered 15–19% discounts; 5% said they offered discounts of 20–29%; and 2% offered discounts of more than 30%. These responses broadly mirror the Artsy data gathered for Art Basel and UBS’s report The Art Market 2024, which showed that the average discount for works sold on Artsy in 2023 was 18%.

3. Ultra-contemporary artists are most important to most gallery businesses.

Galleries view ultra-contemporary artists—those born in or after 1975—as most important to their business today. When asked to select the most important cohorts of artists, the largest proportion of respondents (48%) selected artists born between 1975 and 1989, followed by artists born after 1990 (32%).

This data is commensurate with current interest in artists from the ultra-contemporary cohort. The rise in prominence of such artists has been one of the key themes from recent years in the art world, with a slew of blockbuster gallery representation announcements, headline-grabbing auction results, and museum shows for younger generations of artists becoming increasingly commonplace. Ultra-contemporary artists also dominated the list of most in-demand and trending artists on Artsy we published last year in The Art Market Recap 2023.

This emphasis on the ultra-contemporary cohort—which encompasses the vast majority of young and emerging artists working today, whose works tend to sell at lower price points—is reflected in the prices of artworks that galleries view as most important to their business. Asked to identify the two most important artwork value segments, most respondents (39%) selected the $5,000–$10,000 range, and under $5,000 (39%).

4. Most galleries co-represent artists with other galleries.

Joint gallery representation has been the basis for much recent art world discussion, due in large part to a growing number of collaboration initiatives between larger and smaller galleries. Hauser & Wirth, for instance, last year announced a “collective impact” approach to sharing representation of artists, premised on combining resources with smaller galleries to uplift their artists.

But joint gallery representation across a globalized art market is not a novel concept, our survey shows. Some 64% of respondents whose galleries represent artists said that they co-represent artists with other galleries.

Unsurprisingly, represented artists are driving the most sales for galleries that have a roster of represented artists. The largest proportion (37%) of these respondents say that artists they have represented for more than five years drove the most sales for their gallery in 2023, followed by artists they have represented for between one and five years (33%). When asked what proportion of represented artists make up the most of their gallery sales, the highest percentage (30%) of respondents said that less than 20% of their represented artists constitute the majority of their sales, followed by 75–100% of their represented artists (19%).

Galleries that participated in this report illustrate a broad spectrum of the industry: Of respondents who represent artists, 33% represent fewer than five artists, followed by more than 21 artists (24%) and between two and 10 artists (22%). Most (46%) took on only one or two artists last year, followed by three to five new artists (28%). This is consistent with these respondents’ expectations for 2024: Most (40%) plan on taking on one or two artists in 2024, followed by three to five (26%).

5. Online marketplaces outrank art fairs as an impactful way for galleries to meet new clients.

Galleries view online marketplaces as a more impactful source of meeting new clients than art fairs. When asked to select the three most impactful options, respondents who reported an increase in new clients in 2023 selected in-person gallery walk-ins as the most important (55%), followed by online marketplaces (42%) and art fairs (36%).

This picture changes slightly among larger galleries, where online marketplaces outrank all other channels as the most impactful means of meeting new clients. The option was selected by 73% of these respondents, more than art fairs (45%), art advisors (45%), emails (27%), and in-person walk-ins at galleries (27%).

When asked to select the methods that are a growing source of artwork sales for their business, most large galleries (54%) selected online marketplace / e-commerce, followed by art fairs (38%). This contrasts with what we found among smaller galleries—identified as having three or fewer full-time employees—where 26% said that online marketplaces were a growing source of artwork sales. Among this group, in-person conversations (39%) and email conversations / sending PDFs via email (35%) ranked at the top.

In terms of online sales, the picture is largely one of overall stability. For large galleries, the same percentage of respondents (44%) reported that online sales in 2023 had risen or stayed the same compared with 2022. For smaller galleries, the majority reported that online sales had either stayed the same (37%) or increased (28%), but a higher percentage (23%) said that their online sales had decreased.

When it comes to marketing, physical and digital channels are viewed on a broadly equal footing, confirming the hybrid state of the post-pandemic art world. Galleries across all groups said that email newsletters and in-person events are the most important marketing channels, with each option being selected by 51% of respondents when asked to identify up to three of their most important channels. This is followed by gallery websites (37%), online marketplaces (32%), organic social media (31%), and in-person art fairs (25%).

Download Art Industry Trends 2024.

Methodology

Art Industry Trends 2024 was developed through an online survey that ran from April to May 2024, with responses from 716 gallery professionals and dealers who are both partners and non-partners of Artsy. The majority of participants (42%) are based in the U.S., followed by the U.K. (10%). Some 16% have been in business for less than three years, 40% have been in business for three to 15 years, and 44% have been in business for more than 15 years. Some 68% of respondents have a permanent, physical location. Large galleries are defined as having 25 or more full-time employees, and small galleries are defined as having three or fewer full-time employees.