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May’s bumper season of auctions in New York often proves a barometer for the health—or otherwise—of the global art market. The verdict this year is that the nervous macro-economic environment, compounded by the latest uncertainties surrounding US trade tariffs, means buyers and sellers are increasingly cautious at the higher end of the market.

On the face of it, the auction totals for Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary art in the week of 12 May were solid, if not quite meeting expectations. The evening sales at Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips totaled just over USD 1bn (including the auction houses’ fees) just shy of the USD 1.1bn made at the equivalent sales last year. But in 2023, this total was USD 1.5bn, while the previous year it stood proud at USD 2.4bn. In November 2022, USD 1.5bn was made from just 61 works from one collection, albeit that of the Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.

“There has been a slowing of activity from the rather frenzied pace we were seeing three years ago. It’s not way out of line with what we’ve been seeing in the broader economy,” says Paul Donovan, chief economist of �鶹�� Global Wealth Management. “Of itself [the slowdown] is not a reason to express huge amount of concern, but I think now that there is an overlay of additional levels of uncertainty,” he says—namely economic nationalism, such as the prospect of tariffs from the US. These “might have contributed at the margins and are something to keep monitoring,” Donovan adds.

Iwan Wirth, co-founder of the international gallery Hauser & Wirth, notes that overall sell-through rates (the amount sold against the amount offered) were high at auction this season—between 87% and 100%. This is to some extent manipulated by the auction houses—by the number of works that are now guaranteed to sell and an increasing number that get withdrawn prior to being offered—but certainly compares strongly to what Wirth recalls as “my very first auction, 33 years ago in May 1992” when the sell-through rate was 60%. Despite “stubbornly high interest rates”, he describes today’s market as “resilient, yet recalibrated.”

There were some obvious flops this season. A 1950s Alberto Giacometti bust of his brother, privately estimated at USD 70m, saw no genuine bidding at Sotheby’s on 13 May, sending a chill through the rest of the week. The mood was already anxious at Christie’s the previous night, where works that carried high estimates generated relatively little additional excitement while a significant 1960s work by Andy Warhol—his pink-washed, gritty Big Electric Chair estimated at USD 30m—was withdrawn prior to sale.

It seems likely a sensible decision. Many works that fared better this season were unchallenging, pretty even, perhaps an escape from too much reality. These included Claude Monet’s melting Peupliers au bord de l’Epte, crépuscule (1891), which sold for a within-estimate USD 37m (USD 43m with fees) at Christie’s, a record for the artist’s ‘Poplars’ series. “It shows that good painting can set a record even in this environment, which is something we are still seeing,” says Matthew Newton, an art advisory specialist with �鶹�� Family Solutions.

Female artists also shone through with Marlene Dumas setting a new record for the highest selling living woman at auction with Miss January (1997)—a near three-metre high painting of a strident lady nude from the waist down (apart from one pink sock)—which sold at Christie’s for USD 11.5m (USD 13.6m with fees). At Phillips, four contemporary female artists made their auction records: Olga de Amaral (USD 1.2m), Grace Hartigan (USD 1.6m), Kiki Kogelnik (USD 355,600) and Ilana Savdie (USD 228,600).

Female sellers also made their presence felt this season and demonstrated their market savvy. Sotheby’s fielded the collections of two dealers—12 works from Barbara Gladstone, who died last year, aged 89, and 15 from Daniella Luxembourg, founder of the London and New York gallery Luxembourg + Co. Each sold within expectations, with high points including Luxembourg’s Maria Nuda (1969) by Michelangelo Pistoletto—this time a fully naked, though less confrontational, woman—which went above its USD 1m-USD 1.5m estimate to sell for USD 2.75m (USD 3.4m with fees). Luxembourg had bought the work for the equivalent of USD 668,000 in 2005, way above its estimate at the time.

As well as biding her time judiciously, Luxembourg had also secured a guarantee for all her works. “I am not a person who takes huge risks. Being more modest, more realistic, is a major virtue these days, you have to let the market decide,” she says.

With more female buyers on the scene, this more realistic mindset seems likely to dominate, Donavan finds. “There’s an ongoing trend of women taking more control over global wealth and an increase in female entrepreneurship. Women are not more risk averse, but generally they do the research so that they understand the risks—they are less likely to spend USD 50m on one single artwork,” he says. Sotheby’s finds that of the buyers for whom it has gender details, female bidders have accounted for 22% so far this year, up from 20% in 2024. At Christie’s, a spokesperson describes female bidding and buying as “consistently strong”, particularly in the Asia Pacific and for its luxury goods sales, where last year 49% of bidders were women.

The broader market trend is of lower value but higher volume activity. According to the latest Art Basel and �鶹�� Global Art Market Report, while the global market fell 12% in value last year, the number of transactions was in fact up by 3%, a divergence that was also apparent in 2023. Auction sales made under USD 5,000 was the only area to grow both in value (by 7%) and volume (13%) last year, the report finds. “In economic terms, I see it as ‘creative destruction’ within the art market”, a process during which a new approach renders the old ways obsolete, says �鶹��’s Newton.

Meanwhile, what is happening in the secondary, public auction market is not necessarily mirrored in the dealer segment. The overall 12% sales drop last year comprised a fall of 25% at auction but a less startling 6% for galleries, finds the Art Basel and �鶹�� report. Private sales by auction houses were found to have countered the downward trend and increased by 14%.

Wirth sees this dynamic continuing into 2025. “Today, the secondary market for mid-tier work is more of a ‘buyer's market’, while at the very top end of the market, sellers are not willing to lower their price expectations and it remains to be seen which way it will go. In the primary market, there is still great interest for certain younger artists up to USD 500,000,” he says. There is momentum too for certain “contemporary masters”, Wirth adds.

All provided food for thought ahead of this year’s Art Basel, generally seen as the most prestigious of the world’s art fairs and for which galleries tend to reserve their highest-value works. Luxembourg acknowledges that “the global situation around the world is really bad” but identifies a creative destructive opportunity to “renew our beliefs and ethics, including in the art world”. She believes now is a time to “take a pause and be more serious”.

And while sales were certainly made at a gentler pace this year, some exhibitors were pleasantly surprised. On the June 17 opening day, the international gallerist Thaddaeus Ropac reported sales ranging from USD 60,000 (for a 2024 work on paper by Raqib Shaw) to USD 2.1m (for Georg Baselitz’s oil painting, Hier jetzt hell, dort dunkel dunkel, 2012). “The dynamic at the fair is exceeding our expectations so far. The quality you see here is incredibly high and this is what people come for,” Ropac said.