It’s no secret that the art market is in a prolonged period of uncertainty. In the 2025 Art Basel & UBS Global Art Market Report, Art Basel CEO Noah Horowitz noted ‘continued headwinds,’ with sales declining by 12% in the second year of a downturn. And yet, there also continues to be strong buying activity: The latest Art Basel fair in Switzerland saw robust demand across all price points. How can we take the temperature of the art market given these conflicting signals? What are collectors looking for at this moment of global unrest, marked by conflict and unstable markets?
‘I tend to discount talk about geopolitical uncertainty as it relates to the art market,’ says Matthew Newton, Senior Art Advisory Specialist in Family Office Solutions at UBS. ‘But in this particular case, I think it is starting to impact the art market. There is truly so much uncertainty and volatility around economic policy that it starts to impact your decisions,’ even when, as he puts it, ‘the wealthy are as wealthy as they’ve ever been.’
Even if US tariffs might not directly impact art, comments Eric Landolt, Head Family Advisory, Art & Collecting at UBS, ‘they play into buying decisions in their impact on the broader market.’ In Newton’s view, we may be seeing a ‘bottoming’ of the market. The speculative fervor of the peak market of 2022 is certainly behind us, he says, ‘but I also don’t feel like things are getting worse.’
Those looking to UBS for guidance on collecting, points out Carola Wiese, Senior Art Advisory Specialist at UBS, ‘will collect in any market circumstance.’ A new generation of buyers from Asia are particularly ‘bullish,’ she observes – ‘and they have a plan and a strategy.’ Collectors at Art Basel Hong Kong in March and Art Basel in Switzerland in June, explains Landolt, ‘were looking for the highest quality of pieces, and they will consider buying even if the environment is a bit more difficult.’