For many in the art industry, 2025 was a tough year marked by a crop of gallery closures and unfavourable auction results for the first three quarters of the year. Geopolitical and economic pressures including US President Donald Trump’s new tariffs contributed to some of the turbulence in the art market, as the free movement of goods that has enabled the contemporary art boom over the past two decades slowed.

But this wasn’t the whole story. The art market continues to reinvent itself. We are seeing more collaborations and consolidations, as well as new possibilities in geographies such as the Middle East. Much to the relief of art market players, there was a palpable rebound in autumn, with Frieze London and Art Basel Paris surprisingly buoyant, and strong November auctions in New York totaling over USD 2 billion. That mood carried over to Art Basel Miami Beach, where strong seven-figure sales made a comeback.

Here, we reflect on five key stories of the year.

Auction records and great estates

Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer (1914-16) sold for USD 236.4 million at Sotheby’s new Breuer Building headquarters in November, making it a record for any Modern work of art and the second most expensive work of art ever to sell at auction. That Klimt result, and indeed the whole November sales series in New York, gave a yearned-for confidence boost to a market that has felt perpetually downbeat for a couple of years. This was in large part due to the the sheer amount of A-grade material from single-owner collections. The Klimt came from the estate of the cosmetics billionaire Leonard Lauder; that collection alone made USD 527.5 million in the evening sale. A group of Surrealist works titled ‘Exquisite Corpus’, reportedly from the collection of the record producer Nesuhi Ertegun and his wife Selma, also sold at Sotheby’s in November, topped by the arresting Frida Kahlo self-portrait El sueño (La cama) (1940), which sold for USD 54.7 million, a new record for a work by a woman. Not everything flew, however - lean estimates and third-party guarantees were key to auction success.

Gallery closures (but some openings, too)

Away from the auction headlines, spiraling costs and sluggish sales forced the demise of several galleries. In July, Tim Blum, the cofounder of the Los Angeles gallery Blum (formerly Blum & Poe), announced he would ‘sunset’ the 30-year-old gallery, ‘transitioning away from the traditional gallery format toward a more flexible model.’ Then the collector turned dealer Adam Lindemann closed his gallery Venus Over Manhattan after 13 years, and the New York and Los Angeles-based gallery Clearing shut both spaces. At the same time, Kasmin Gallery closed after 35 years, though its president Nicholas Olney and head of sales Eric Gleason almost immediately relaunched as Olney Gleason. New York’s Tilton Gallery shut after four decades, and Perrotin and Pace revealed the closure of their Hong Kong outposts in October. London gallery Project Native Informant also wound up after 12 years due to an ‘extremely volatile and unsustainable environment.’

Last month, Stephen Friedman said he will shut his New York space in early 2026 due to mounting costs (the London gallery will remain open), while Sperone Westwater, a 50-year-old New York institution, terminates at the end of this year, amid a lawsuit between the cofounders Gian Enzo Sperone and Angela Westwater.

Bucking this trend, some galleries are expanding. Perrotin debuted in London in March, Thaddaeus Ropac opened a gallery in Milan in September, Waddington Custot will open in Paris early next year, while Hauser & Wirth announced it has bought a palazzo in Sicily for a new location. Several dealers also expanded in London in the autumn: Maureen Paley took on a third space; Modern Art, Sadie Coles, and Grimm expanded to bigger premises; Ben Hunter renovated an entire St James’s townhouse; Mattias Vendelmans opened in Bloomsbury, and father and son David and Jacob Gryn launched Interval Gallery in Clerkenwell. Meanwhile, Hong Kong-based Kiang Malingue opened in New York, Jack Shainman Gallery expanded to a 1,900 m² space in Tribeca, and Konrad Fischer Galerie took on a project space in Los Angeles. Stuart Shave, the founder of London gallery Modern Art, told The Art Newspaper that, rather than being fragile, the art market is ‘something that you have to navigate.’

Consolidation and collaboration

Some galleries are seeking strength in numbers. Shortly after Pace closed in Hong Kong, its CEO Marc Glimcher announced that it would collaborate with the dealer Emmanuel Di Donna and David Schrader, formerly head of private sales at Sotheby’s, to launch Pace Di Donna Schrader Galleries, specializing in secondary market sales. ‘When a business gets this crammed up between expanding operating expenses and narrowing margins, it’s time for an evolution,’ Glimcher told The New York Times. ‘It’s usually a time for consolidation as well, and this is that for sure.’

Another merger was that of four experienced advisors to form a ‘super-group,’ New Perspectives Art Partners – Hong Kong-based Patti Wong and her business partner Philip Hoffman, head of The Fine Art Group advisory, teamed up with Brett Gorvy of the gallery Lévy Gorvy Dayan, Ed Dolman (the former executive chair of Phillips) and Dolman’s son Alex. Dolman told The Art Newspaper that the art industry is undergoing a ‘paradigm shift’ and that people ‘need to come to terms with that.’

The Gulf boom

The Gulf Cooperation Council was a hot topic in 2025, with the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar seen as major growth opportunities for the art market as they seek to diversify their economies. Sotheby’s bookended the year with debut sales in the region, from its first something-for-everyone auction in Saudi Arabia in February, totaling USD 17.3 million, to the inaugural Collectors’ Week in Abu Dhabi at the start of December, which brought in USD 133.4 million from five auctions of cars, real estate, handbags, and jewelry. The Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund ADQ invested USD 1 billion in the auction house last year.

The two major art fair companies also announced they will launch fairs in the region. Art Basel Qatar debuts in early February 2026 with 87 galleries across multiple venues in Doha. Noah Horowitz, CEO of Art Basel, said in the announcement that the art scene across the MENA region ‘has undergone exponential growth in recent decades.’ In October, Frieze announced it is taking over Abu Dhabi Art, which will become Frieze Abu Dhabi in November 2026, under its new owner, the Hollywood agent Ari Emanuel, who bought Frieze from his former company, Endeavor, for a reported USD 200 million in May this year. There is no shortage of money and desire to attract visitors in the region, but it remains to be seen exactly how the more nascent domestic markets will develop.

A new generation of collectors and the rise of cross collecting

One of the biggest issues facing the art market is the dramatic shift in generational taste. While boomers loved blue-chip Impressionist and Modern art, ‘luxury’ is catnip for many Gen Z and millennial buyers, and auction houses have made no secret of their desire to court it. Intending to cater to the eclectic tastes of the younger generation, in December Christie’s held its first ‘Groundbreakers: Icons of our Time’ sale, an eccentric mix of pop culture memorabilia, fashion, J.R.R. Tolkien’s desk, an Aston Martin, and a dinosaur skeleton that sold for GBP 3.5 million. Art Basel in Miami Beach met the quest for new eyeballs with the much-discussed new Zero 10 digital art section, the Instagram star of which was Beeple’s Regular Animals, robotic dogs with the disturbing heads of Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, et al.

Concluding the year, Sotheby’s and Christie’s announced positive financial results, with projected revenue at USD 7 bn (+17% y-o-y) and USD 6.2 bn (+6%) respectively. This is a potential indication that their diversification strategies across geographic expansion and cross-collecting are paying off. Whether digital art, sneakers, dinosaurs ­– or all three – will attract new tech wealth to the art market is an ongoing field test, as are new events in the Middle East. But this intensely cyclical market will seemingly end 2025 in the foothills of an upward curve.

Anna Brady, the former art market editor of The Art Newspaper, is a UK-based writer, editor, and speaker. She was previously the features editor of Harper’s Bazaar Arabia and Harper’s Bazaar Art Arabia in Dubai, and diary editor at The Antiques Trade Gazette. Anna has been a regular guest on Monocle Radio and written for publications including Apollo, House & Garden, The World of Interiors, The Evening Standard, The Independent, The New European and Wallpaper.

Caption for header image: View of Applicat-Prazan's booth at Art Basel Paris 2025.

Published on December 18, 2025.