Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in On Balance, the ARTnews newsletter about the art market and beyond. Sign up here to receive it every Wednesday.
Industry Moves
Patron Gallery Adds Miao Wang to Its Roster: The Chicago-based painter will be featured in a two-artist presentation with Alice Tippit at Expo Chicago next week.
Open Restitution Africa Launches AI-Powered Restitution Data Platform: The initiative has released a publicly accessible, bilingual database, alongside an AI tool that allows communities, researchers, and cultural professionals to query the archive for practical guidance on return processes.
Jessica Silverman Adds Koak to Its Roster: The California-based Neo-Pop painter will have her first solo show with the San Francisco gallery in March 2027. A selection of her work will appear at Expo Chicago next week.
Sundaram Tagore Gallery Opens London Space: With spaces in New York and Singapore, the gallery known for its focus on diasporic artists will open a multilevel space on Pall Mall featuring two floors of exhibition space, a private viewing room, and a venue for screenings and performances.
Anat Ebgi Adds Veronica Fernandez to Its Roster: The Los Angeles–based painter has previously shown with Night Gallery, Pippy Houldsworth, and Thierry Goldberg. Her solo exhibition “Prey” is on view at the gallery’s Wilshire Boulevard space through April 4.
The Big Number: $164.9 M.
That was the combined total, in dollars, for the spring marquee sales in Hong Kong across Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Phillips last week.That result marked a significant rebound from last autumn’s $136.3 million—the lowest total in eight years—and also surpassed last spring’s comparable total of $139.9 million.
Read This.
Leave it to Josh Kline, one of the great observers of our failing economy, to write the definitive tract on how the New York art world has let its artists down. On social media this week, all New York–based artists could talk about was “New York Real Estate and the Ruin of American Art,” his essay for the newest issue of the academic journal October , which attributes a national artistic crisis felt since the pandemic to the spiraling costs of apartments, studios, and galleries in Manhattan. To be an artist in New York today, Kline acidly notes, is “completely unsustainable,” and the market is but one small factor in that. Here’s Kline on who really benefits from commercial galleries in New York right now: “Those fortunate few are artists whose careers are usually developed at great financial risk by young galleries that are unable to fully capitalize on their success. As their most financially successful artists leave for boomer galleries, Gen X or millennial galleries are left without any possibility of growing or competing with their elders.” —Alex Greenberger, Senior Editor
