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2020 was a difficult year for the art world. The health emergency and forced lockdown severely curbed museum and gallery activities, and all major events were cancelled or postponed.
Museums, galleries, foundations, fairs and auction houses have had to rethink their business by launching into digital and online in order to continue their activities and stay close to their audience. In the previous episode we talked about art fairs, perhaps the most affected by the crisis. Now it is time for the auction houses.
Sotheby's, Christie's, Phillips: a good opportunity
If art fairs have suffered the gap between the physical exhibition and its digital counterpart, auction houses are in a better situation. The big players (Sotheby's, Christie's and Phillips in primis) have confirmed their interest in digital, immediately launching new online formats that have taken the place of the physical event.
Websites and social networks have become the main marketing channels, supporting the event no longer physically, but digitally. After a first moment of disorientation, online auctions became more and more popular in the first half of the year.
The results were excellent, considering the period of crisis, and buyers were ready to purchase art online. It was already a strongly international market and perhaps for this very reason there was already an open mindset towards online. 2020 also confirmed a trend that had already been strong in recent years: several investors belong to the younger millennial generation, an audience that is more digitally oriented.
Online-only, hybrid auctions and private sales
In the first part of the 2020s, the online-only format was predominant: auctions held exclusively online connected buyers from all over the world to win the most desired lots.
Despite its moderate success, the winning format was that of hybrid auctions. Launched by Christie's, Sotheby's and Phillips in the summer of 2020, these auctions are both in person and online, often live-streamed.
The analysis by ArtTactic, an art market analysis and monitoring company, showed that hybrid auctions accounted for 32.2 % of the total value traded at auction ($2.37 billion out of a total $7.37), while online-only auctions "only" accounted for 13.8 % ($1.02 billion out of $7.37).
Finally, another format that is dominating the scene is that of private sales, sales by private negotiation between two collectors with the support of the auction house. An ever-increasing trend: just think that Christie's activity for private sales has increased by almost 120 % in the first four months of 2020 compared to 2019.
This is in short the new set-up of auction houses, one of the most important players of the art market, and the union between digital and physical seems more and more the right way to face the crisis.
