Sotheby’s launches digital art marketplace in the teeth of NFT collapse

Even after a drop in sales of art-related NFTs at 49 percent by 2022, Sotheby’s has launched a peer-to-peer marketplace for the secondary sale of digital art, allowing collectors to trade directly with each other.

The new marketplace, which will record transactions on the Ethereum and Polygon blockchains, will enable sellers of works from a “curated rotating selection of leading artists” to list items, with the first round including art market favorites Tyler Hobbs, Claire Silver and Refik Anatolia. A 2.5 percent seller’s fee and artist resale royalty will be paid directly after a transaction.

“While we previously worked with third-party partners to facilitate our crypto payments, we can now deliver a more seamless transaction experience,” said Michael Bouhanna, Sotheby’s head of digital art and NFTs.

The news comes a month after the auction house announced it would sell the significant collection of NFTs from Three Arrows Capital, the cryptocurrency fund that collapsed last year.

Even as the art market embraces digital advances, there are signs of stricter scrutiny on the horizon. This week, a jury in New York convicted Nathaniel Chastain, a former employee of NFT marketplace OpenSea, of bank fraud and money laundering, based on allegations that he had selected tokens to be prominently displayed on the market while also purchasing them for personal gain as a form. of “insider trading”. He faces a maximum of 40 years in prison.

Maike Cruse has been appointed as director of Art Basel’s original Swiss fair. The former director of Gallery Weekend Berlin takes over the newly created position in July. “I feel very honored to join a team with which I share a vision for the next chapter in Art Basel’s evolution,” says Cruse, who worked at the organization as communications manager between 2008 and 2011.

The announcement means the fair’s set of directors continues to grow, with Angelle Siyang-Le overseeing the Hong Kong edition, Clément Delépine at Paris+ par Art Basel and a director for the Miami event “actively” being recruited, according to the fair.

Art Basel CEO Noah Horowitz says: “With four fairs on three continents, we are too big for a single person to manage the growth and development of Art Basel while being intimately involved in all aspects of its operations. market.” Horowitz says the move to hire individual fair directors is also to ensure each show’s “regional specificity” and to bring in “younger leaders and their perspectives.”

The galleries are starting to increase the prices of artwork as a direct result of inflation, according to a new industry report published by online marketplace Artsy. Based on nearly 1,000 responses to its annual survey, Art Industry Trends 2023 found that 66 percent of gallerists working in the primary market had raised prices “significantly or slightly,” and 46 percent of galleries specializing in secondary market works had done the same.

“Art has traditionally been seen as a fairly robust hedge against inflation,” says Alexander Forbes, Artsy’s head of galleries and fairs, “and the market is resilient to broader macroeconomic challenges, as collectors typically have well-diversified portfolios. . . But when you look at the factors facing primary market galleries – the rising costs of travel, shipping and fixed costs – it’s not surprising that inflationary effects are being felt.”

Gallerist and consultant Tanya Baxter suggests that the picture may be multifaceted: “Inflation alone is unlikely to push prices up as gallerists are more concerned with the long-term relationships with clients, and at the top end of the market it is unlikely. to make much of a difference anyway. However, I think that everyone is more risk-averse and conscious in the decisions they make.”

Other findings in the Artsy report were more predictable: 38 percent of respondents had increased online sales from the previous year and 47 percent of younger galleries (in business for less than three years) saw ultra-contemporary artists as most important to their future.

Tefaf New York Art Fair (May 12-16) has announced that five major works, including a wallpaper of found objects by Ghanaian artist El Anatsui and a bar in the shape of a large grasshopper by François-Xavier Lalanne, will reside in the Park Avenue Armory as part of this year’s Creative Spaces initiative.

The show, which kicks off New York’s busy sales month, will have more than 90 dealers at the American sibling of the original Maastricht event. “When Tefaf first came to New York in 2016, it was known as ‘the Dutch fair,’ but people don’t think of it that way anymore,” says Will Korner, fair manager. “When you organize an event like this in the middle of Manhattan, you realize that you can open up dialogue with a variety of new faces and networks, a reality that has also been part of Frieze’s success [in New York].”

There will be 13 new exhibitors alongside the usual big names, including Thaddaeus Ropac, who will bring works by Viennese artist Martha Jungwirth (€50,000 to €450,000).

Over at Spring Studios, the independent art fair (May 11-14) will host its 14th edition, complete with the launch of its first online sales platform.

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