Editor’s note

Good morning. Put on your smock and study up on chiaroscuro, because today, the Brew is taking you into the world of art. We’ll discuss the art market’s recent rebound, what it takes to run a gallery, why robbing museums isn’t as lucrative as it seems on TV, and more. Whether you’re an art history student writing a dissertation on René Magritte or someone who doesn’t know who René Magritte is, there’s something for everyone in Art Brew.

PORTRAIT OF A MARKET ON FIRE

Peter Parks/Getty Images

For a moment there, it seemed like nobody wanted to own precious paintings anymore. But after art sales at auctions worldwide declined between 2022 and 2025, sky-high gavel poundings this year have all but erased the market’s freefall.

Sales at Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Phillips hit $6.8 billion in the first half of the year, a 70% year-over-year increase that was in part propelled by demand for famous 20th-century works:

• The global auction market hasn’t performed this well since the first half of 2022, when it netted $7.1 billion, according to Bank of America.
• Hot commodities this year included a Jackson Pollock bought for $181.2 million—making it the fourth most expensive artwork ever sold at public auction—and a Mark Rothko that went for $98.4 million.
• Christie’s noted that fine art remains its most important category, but auction houses’ overall sales were also buoyed by collectibles—an entry-point category for many younger bidders that includes trading cards, watches, and even dinosaur fossils.

Art Basel tea leaves: The median disclosed sale price at Switzerland’s famous art fair nearly tripled to $287,500 this year, suggesting a broad pickup in spending that extends beyond the wealthiest collectors, per Maddox Gallery.

This month brings another doozy of an auction

If you have several million dollars to spare, mark your calendar for Nov. 18 in New York. That’s when Sotheby’s will auction off a famous 12-painting collection that’s been likened to “a small museum” with “almost mythical status in the art world.” All in, the artwork is expected to net $450+ million.

Desirable No. 1: “Châtaigniers en fleurs,” a rare Van Gogh, is projected to sell for at least $180 million, which would shatter the artist’s previous public auction record of $117 million in 2022.

But…despite the art world’s auction momentum, galleries are struggling, a former Art Basel global director wrote earlier this year. One reason may be that collectors are leaning away from emerging artists and embracing established, historical names—aka an auction house’s bread and butter.—ML

      

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exhibition game

Unsplash

Besides a great excuse to wear black turtlenecks, what do art dealers get out of operating a gallery? Well, if things go right, they can actually make a decent living. But that’s a big “if.”

Art-ing from scratch: To start a gallery, you need a place to operate. But that’s not cheap: The New York Times reported in 2023 that it cost about $12,000 per month to rent a small-to-midsize gallery in the Big Apple.

Buyers and sellers: Once you’ve got a physical gallery space, you need to start pushing your business’s flywheel: the Rolodex. Building a roster of quality artists attracts big-pocketed collectors, and both are important for gallery owners, who:

• Either charge artists a flat exhibition fee.
• Or take a 40%–60% commission on sales, per The Holy Art gallery.

Hidden costs: Even with an affordable studio packed full of trendy art, galleries can struggle to keep those little brass lights on, thanks to the thousands of dollars it costs to pay for employees, storage, photography, insurance, shipping, and travel.

Paint by numbers: With so many factors, the art business can be more off-balance than a pair of Vincent van Gogh’s glasses. But, on average, the New York Times estimates that a small-to-midsize gallery could bring in about $295,000 in monthly revenue against $91,000 in costs.—BC

      

art of the steal

Kiran Ridley/Getty Images

There have been so many high-profile art heists in the last year that you’d think someone put together a super team of thieves to hit museums. And while the art is worth millions, you can’t exactly use a Renoir to buy a meal, so what becomes of these works once they’re stolen?

Items with gold can be melted down, and jewel-encrusted objects can be deconstructed and resold, but hocking paintings can be extremely difficult. Interpol and the FBI maintain stolen art databases, which help buyers avoid unwittingly purchasing pilfered merchandise. But the absconders still have options:

• There’s the black market, where the art can be sold, but often at a fraction of its value.
• Some thieves will hold art as ransom or use it to negotiate reduced charges on other crimes.
• Stolen art can be traded for weapons, as was allegedly the case with the Italian mafia.

Once the art is gone, it’s likely gone forever. While two of the four paintings taken from the Renoir Museum this year were dropped right outside its doors, experts say that less than 10% of swiped artwork is ever recovered, with some saying the true number is just 2%–3%, per Euronews.—DL

      

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priceless-ish

Getty Images

A Romantic-era landscape is certainly more pleasant to look at than a framed US Treasury note. But art auction houses and platforms that tout art as a prudent investment warrant the same skepticism as your cousin’s efforts to sell his charcoal drawings on Instagram.

The biggest dividend is aesthetic satisfaction

Investment experts agree a Rothko isn’t the most efficient way to save for retirement:

• Art market returns have trailed those of the S&P 500 for much of the past three decades, yielding returns similar to bonds—but with more risk.
• Art valuations can be more volatile than stocks and arguably even less predictable, as evolving tastes and cultural trends affect the market.
• Unlike stocks and bonds, paintings and sculptures take time to sell and often incur storage costs.

Economists have also found that art market indexes tend to overestimate returns, as they’re skewed toward more in-demand art pieces getting sold rather than the entire collectibles market.

However…some economists say that the art market has underperformed over the past few years, meaning it might currently be undervalued. Buying art can also be a hedge against financial crashes, since art values often don’t move in sync with the stock market.

You can’t put a price tag on beauty: An art collection is one of the few assets that delivers aesthetic fulfillment and promotes cultural vibrancy, so investment experts advise treating it primarily as a passion.—SK

      

wait, what?

Where the ultrarich stash their art tax-free

A port warehouse in Geneva. Fabrice Coffrini/Getty Images

While the rest of us let our prints get sun-bleached on our apartment walls, the ultrawealthy keep their valuable art in high-security bunkers, away from prying tax officials.

Free ports, which are duty-free places to store goods like grain and tea, have popped up around the globe in tax-friendly areas like Delaware and Singapore as secure climate-controlled places to hold high-priced art before new owners or traders decide its final destination (and before whopping sales taxes get slapped on). In the last few years, collectors have increasingly sent art to free ports, concerned about growing natural disasters, as well as EU regulations and US tariffs.

Expensive art can sometimes spend decades in these free ports, which have no storage time limit. The art racks up value without triggering any country’s capital gains tax—a surefire way to park millions of dollars tax-free.

The oldest free port, and arguably the one with the most heat on it, is in Geneva, Switzerland. The intense discretion and security of a free port have also led to unsavory activities: In 2014, police found €9 million (~$10.9 million) worth of stolen ancient Roman artifacts in the Geneva free port warehouse.—MM

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mailbag

Catching a glimpse of humanity’s most beautiful creations doesn’t have to involve jostling around in a sea of selfie sticks. That’s why we asked you to share an underrated art museum that you enjoyed visiting—and you put a spotlight on some incredible hidden gems.

Here are some we’re excited to visit one day:

• “The Sock Monkey Museum is located in historic Long Grove, Illinois. It holds the Guinness World Record for the largest collection of handmade sock monkeys in the world, featuring more than 2,400, including a giant 7-foot fiberglass sock monkey named Burrito.”—Anonymous
• “Collection de l’Art Brut in Lausanne, Switzerland. It’s a museum dedicated to works by self-taught artists, including psychiatric patients, prisoners and social outcasts. Some of it was really good! And some were a bit disturbing...”—Cindy from Palm Beach Gardens, FL
• “Minnesota Marine Art Museum in Winona, Minnesota. Every work of art has some connection to water. They have Picassos, Renoirs, and an early copy of ‘Washington Crossing the Delaware.’”—Gary from Deerwood, MN
• “National Carpet Museum of Turkmenistan in Ashgabat. It has the Guinness World Record-holding largest carpet and lots of horse carpets.”—Sara from London
• “Leprechaun Museum in Dublin. Informative? Not particularly. But it had a room of oversized furniture where you could climb around and pretend you were leprechaun-sized.”—Morgan Grace from Covington, KY

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• A ranking of America’s safest cities.
• The status symbols for this fall.
• See whether you’re earning more or less than others your age.
• The best hospitals in each US state.
• Decadent house slippers.**

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