Last year, global art market sales declined by 12%.
69% of art collectors say a lack of transparency—about prices, provenance, and additional information—has kept them from buying art.
Only 5% of surveyed collectors say the art market is “completely” transparent.
23% of Brits think memes can be considered art.
The actor Adrien Brody sold one of his original paintings for $425,000.
77% of Americans think they could replicate Composition with Red, Blue, and Yellow, by Piet Mondrian.
Piet Mondrian, Composition No. II, 1920
33% of American adults say they’ve been to a museum in the past year.
For museums, the median cost of accommodating a single visitor is $82.
27% of Brits would not like to see the Mona Lisa in real life.
A 5-year-long partnership between the Museum of Modern Art and Mattel has resulted in 7 toys, including a Van Gogh Barbie that wears a dress printed with The Starry Night.
Gold items worth $711,000 were stolen from Paris’s National Museum of Natural History in September.
33 days later, thieves stole 8 pieces of jewelry, worth an estimated $102,000,000, from the Louvre.
The heist took 7 minutes.
Among the stolen items was Empress Eugénie’s tiara, which has 1,998 diamonds, 992 rose-cut diamonds, and 212 pearls. 0 of the items were privately insured.
All 4 of the suspected thieves behind the heist have been detained.
20 outdoor statues at Versailles—including one of Apollo riding a chariot and another of Cupid on a sphinx—are now enabled with an OpenAI audio tool on the historic site’s app that lets tourists “speak” to them.
53% of Americans think AI will worsen people’s ability to think creatively.
Only 12% of Americans are confident that they can tell the difference between human-generated and AI-generated content, including art.
Marina Abramovic’s latest performance art piece is an immersive 4-hour-long erotic Balkan ritual.
Marina Abramović, Women Massaging Breasts from the series Balkan Erotic Epic, C-Print, 2005, Serbia.
During Art Basel Paris, a 64.8-foot-long inflatable Kermit the Frog made by Alex Da Corte was placed at Place Vendôme.
Installation of Alex Da Corte’s Kermit The Frog, Eden on Place Vendome during the Art Basel Paris 2025
Last year, 31% of art dealers found new clients at art fairs.
Ari Emanuel’s events company, Mari, bought Frieze—the fairs, magazine, and galleries—for nearly $200,000,000.
In 2024, 2 new art fairs were started.
Meanwhile, 31 art fairs shut down.
In 2025, after 35 years in business, Kasmin Gallery closed.
After more than 30 years, the gallery Blum (formerly Blum & Poe) closed.
After 14 years, the gallery Clearing closed.
After more than 13 years, the gallery Venus Over Manhattan closed.
Between 2014 and 2024, the number of artworks that sold for over $1,000,000 at auction fell by 46%.
Alberto Giacometti, Grande tête mince, 1954
In May, Sotheby’s put an Alberto Giacometti bronze bust on sale for $70,000,000 making it the most expensive item at the spring auctions.
$0 was spent on it, because it did not sell.
In October, bidding for Joan Rivers’s signed George H.W. Bush headshot started at $25.
It ultimately sold for $1,920.
Maurizio Cattelan, America (Cattelan), 2016
A fully functional, solid 18-karat gold toilet created by the artist Maurizio Cattelan sold at auction at Sotheby’s for $12.1 million in November.
Titled America, the 220 pound toilet was purchased by Ripley’s Believe It or Not!.
Sources: UBS, Artsy, Julien’s Auction, ARTNews, YouGov, America Alliance of Museums, Re-Museum, The New York Times, Le Monde, Pew Research Center, Aviva Studios, Variety, the Wall Street Journal
