The 5 biggest takeaways from Art Basel Miami Beach

IT LOOKED the same, and the dull roar of hundreds of rich collectors having a good time sounded the same, but this year’s Art Basel Miami Beach was, in several important respects, very different from years past. The art market’s prolonged contraction combined with geopolitical events and a general sense of market fatigue to contribute, many participants said, to an opening day unlike any in recent memory.

Simply put, the frenzied, speculative fervor of years past was mostly absent. Collectors took the time to chat with dealers and one another, browse booths, look at new work and listen. This was a glimpse of what older participants wistfully describe as the art market of the 1990s and early 2000s: less of an emphasis on a painting’s investment potential, more interest in whether the art is any good.

Here are five of the biggest takeaways from the fair, which featured 277 galleries and ran through Dec. 10.

1. Presales Are DownMost galleries follow the same formula: In the weeks before an art fair opens, they’ll send a PDF to their clients with what they plan to bring. Then, if they can, they’ll either presell pieces or allow clients to place works on reserve, subject to the collector seeing them in person when the fair opens. This year, presales and reserves at many booths were down significantly.

“In the past few years, we’ve gone into these fairs and around 50% of [each] booth has been presold,” said adviser Suzanne Modica of Modica Carr Art Advisory. “I think this year it was more like maybe 25%.” This adjustment can be nightmarish for dealers, who prefer to know that their costs have been covered upfront; one dealer, who did not wish to be identified, said that before the fair she was “terrified.” But it was great for collectors.

“For us, it was also pleasantly surprising,” said Ms. Modica. “Because it’s been frustrating. The past few years the booths [have been] almost completely sold when you get to the fair. It makes you wonder why you come to the fairs if there’s nothing to sell or buy.”

2. The Sell Is Harder“Collectors are being more deliberate this year,” said Kibum Kim, a partner at Los Angeles’ Commonwealth and Council. “It’s just there isn’t the kind of urgency that we’ve seen, especially [compared to] the art fairs last year.”

On Dec. 6, when the fair opened up to VIPs, crowds were visible. People were definitely eager to look at art, meet with dealers and ask for prices.

Still, actual sales took longer to close. “It’s definitely slower,” said Wendy Olsoff, co-founder of New York’s P.P.O.W., speaking during the fair’s first day. “But we’re selling.” She gestured to a group of works by Ann Agee, priced from $18,000 to $30,000 — several of which sold in the fair’s first few hours. “We will sell them all,” she said, “it’s just going to take some time.”

Mr. Kim, for his part, said the slower pace isn’t necessarily all bad. “Honestly, it’s hard as a business,” he said, “but oftentimes the most gratifying part of the job is to actually talk about art and learn new things together and engage in these dialogues.” Indeed, many dealers reported solid, if unspectacular, sales by the end of the first day.

3. The Price Ceiling for Impulse Buys Has ChangedSales exceeding $1 million take weeks, even months, to put together and are then reported on the fair’s opening day. (Several of the biggest galleries reported a bevy of them: Hauser & Wirth said it sold a painting by Philip Guston for $20 million; David Zwirner said it sold three Robert Ryman paintings for $2 million to $3 million apiece; and Lehmann Maupin reported the sale of two works by Teresita Fernández for a combined total of $1 million.)

But many dealers said that transactions occurring when a collector walks into a booth, sees something and buys it were taking place at much lower prices than in previous years.

“It’s not a frothy, frivolous market,” said the dealer Sean Kelly, whose gallery reported nine sales by the end of the first day. “I think there is a price point above which people are taking more time to make decisions.” For his gallery, Mr. Kelly continued, that price ceiling ranges somewhere from $250,000 to $500,000. “Once you go over that kind of level, people are being more considered,” he continues. “Let’s not forget, that’s still a lot of money. At that level, you’re talking about the price of an average home in America.”

4. Collectors Are Running Out of SpaceConsider the hundreds of booths at the fair and the number of artworks (often well over 20) in each booth. Then take into account the dozens of art fairs and hundreds of auctions that have already occurred this year, at which many of the same collectors bought art. At a certain point, many buyers simply lack space to put up anything new.

“Increasingly, we have clients that are less inclined to just buy a work and put it in storage,” said adviser Modica. “They really want to live with that acquisition” — which becomes harder, she continued, when they run out of wall space. “We’ve definitely had people say, ‘Oh this is great, but I don’t necessarily have a wall this size for this work,’” she says.

During the frenzied housing market, as many people bought second, third, or fourth homes, their wall space expanded. “When people are buying new spaces, they’re buying art to fill them up,” said the collector and adviser Eleanor Cayre. “I think you saw during the pandemic that a lot of people were moving around, getting second homes outside of the city, and that did add to all the volume and sales we saw during the pandemic years — people trying to fill the walls of their new places.”

It might sound, Cayre continued, as if “it’s a surface reason, but it’s real: People buy when they have new homes.” Given that the housing market has cooled, she explained, it’s logical that art purchases have, too. “People want to live with their art.”

5. And Finally … an Art (Fair) for Art’s SakeAnyone with exposure to press releases has come to dread the word “activation,” a catch-all term that usually describes a marketing event at which alcohol is served and/or music is played. Art Basel Miami Beach has become famous for activations, particularly those involving cars, credit cards, and most important, fashion. (For a single, bewildering year, that list also included crypto enterprises.)

To the surprise of many, notwithstanding plenty of brand events this year, activations of all stripes seemed slightly diminished.

“Four years ago, you felt fashion just took over, and every event was somehow connected to a brand,” said the dealer Thaddaeus Ropac as he stood in his booth. “And we were only the decoration.” Now, he said, “it’s better this year. There’s less fashion presence, and it feels like it’s more about the art again.”