The Gray Market

The Gray Market is a bi-weekly column by Tim Schneider about the art market’s transition from an informal, insular economy to a professionalised, growth-minded industry.

The Gray Market: Anyone wrestling with money's influence on art has 800 years of company

A show at the Morgan Library & Museum traces the modern economy's emergence in the Middle Ages—and how it influenced art from the start

Green is the New Black

In this monthly column, our correspondent Louisa Buck looks at how the art industry is responding to our climate and ecological crisis

Among the seemingly endless round of biennials, eco-minded Klima Biennale in Vienna offers something genuinely new

Austrian capital is working with a local and international artists to provide some fresh perspectives on confronting the world’s environmental crises

New York Insider

Art critic and journalist Linda Yablonksy takes us inside New York's art scene and beyond

'See Stop Run': Christopher Wool's flashback to DIY, gritty 1970s New York

The American artist has staged an independent exhibition in an unoccupied space in the heart of Manhattan's financial district

Crisis vs utopia: New York shows of Richard Mosse and James Welling take photography to its limits

Exhibitions at Jack Shainman and David Zwirner present very different ways of taking the medium beyond the visible world

Diamond Stingily thinks outside the sandbox at Greene Naftali in New York

The artist conceived of the funereal show during a year in which both her mother and grandmother died

At 52 Walker, Kayode Ojo raids Amazon.com to create a Modernist Eden

The rising star has created a luxe product paradise for the New York gallery

Art Market Eye

Cutting-edge art market analysis by Georgina Adam, our editor-at-large

Art Market Eye | Will there be more or less work for art lawyers in 2024?

In what looks likely to be the continuation of a declining market, we may see more litigation in the art world this year

End of an era? Jussi Pylkkänen's departure reveals much about today’s art market

The star auctioneer is leaving Christie's after 38 years to share his experience "with a new generation of collectors"

Lee Miller comes into focus, at last

With two shows coming up and auction prices on the rise, the US photographer is finally emerging from the shadows of her famous male associates

Sharing the Bacon: how fractionalisation is taking the art market by storm

Artex, the latest in a slew of new initiatives, is offering shares in a Francis Bacon triptych for as little as $100—but is it a good investment?

The Buck stopped here

Louisa Buck, our contemporary art correspondent, brings us all the latest from the UK's key art events

Radical reboot of Black presence in art explored in three London shows

The white, Western canon is being reassessed at the National Portrait Gallery, the Royal Academy and the Dulwich Picture Gallery

Subversive stitch: textile shows across UK unravel histories and weave new tales

From Lubaina Himid's colonial cotton at the Holburne Museum to a group survey at the Barbican, the once maligned medium is in the spotlight

Tate Britain invites you to eat the patriarchy—literally

For the museum's landmark survey of British feminist art, Bobby Baker has reconstructed her 1976 edible work of a life-sized family made from cake and biscuits

Marina Abramović passes the baton on to a new generation of performers

A group of London shows, performances and events organised around the pioneering artist sees her extend her legacy

Slade to Zaria

Slade to Zaria, which refers to the prominent art schools in London and Nigeria, is a column by Chibundu Onuzo, a novelist and fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Every month she shares her reflections on the contemporary art world.


Is the Royal Academy's 'Entangled Pasts' exhibition radical? Yes—for the Royal Academy

The London institution may have woken up to its responsibility of presenting its role in Britain’s imperial past. But please don't go back to sleep...

'The art fair is a market, not a museum'

As this year's calendar gets under way—next stops, Delhi and Los Angeles—Chibundu Onuzo reflects on her experience at Frieze London to assess what these global events offer

A tale of two art worlds: how Black-centred art is often relegated to outside central London

The Association of Women in the Arts's first conference near Bond Street and the 'Lagos, Peckham, Repeat' exhibition in south London are worlds—and a lengthy commute—apart

Art stars of tomorrow? Four of my favourite artists from the Slade School degree show in London

Unburdened by lengthy texts, gushing profiles and auction prices, graduate exhibitions are a reminder of the subjective nature of art

Diary of an art historian

Bendor Grosvenor, art historian and broadcaster, tells us about his latest research, discoveries and views

Court of Appeal ruling will prevent UK museums from charging reproduction fees—at last

Those © symbols on UK museum websites and catalogues are now redundant if the original work of art is out of copyright

Was a Vienna auction's €6,000 'copy' of the Sistine Chapel's ceiling actually by Michelangelo?

My heart-stopping research saga to find out if Dorotheum’s part-painted cartoon by a "follower" was in fact a sleeper

Protestors took too much risk throwing soup on the Sunflowers—and missed an opportunity

Had they thought about it more deeply, the activists who attacked the Van Gogh work could have gained something more than attention

Some (impertinent) art advice for King Charles III on how to manage the Royal Collection

Opening it up through more generous loans and by easing copyright restrictions would be good for both HM and the country

Trade Secrets

Every month, our editor-at-large Melanie Gerlis shares her insights on the art market

How Gagosian's east London Christo show proved the power of the pop-up exhibition

Who says something eye-catching and short-term can’t also be serious?

Opinion

A change of regime in Poland presents challenges and opportunities for the culture sector

After eight years of the right-wing PiS-led government, breaking down the silos in the country's arts sector will be key

Jack Lohman

A closer Luke

Ben Luke, our Review editor and podcast host, weighs in on the pressing issues facing the UK art world and beyond

‘"Immersive" art makes me yearn for something less empty’

Among the art world’s favourite terms, "immersive" art has become a byword for a shallow form of meaningless spectacle

'The NFT bubble has popped, but there’s still untapped potential in digital art'

Artists have long mined cyberspace for inspiration, as two current exhibitions underscore

Not everyone is celebrating Picasso’s big anniversary—that makes it more exciting

A series of exhibitions marking the 50th anniversary of the Spanish artist's death includes a show curated by comedian and Picasso-hater Hannah Gadsby

Twenty-five years after it opened, artists still find it hard to love the Guggenheim Bilbao

Architect Frank Gehry claimed his design for the Spanish satellite museum was neutral and would not compete with the art within—did he succeed?

Fair or not, Tate's discrimination row has damaged its reputation among the very artists it needs to attract

The institution denies claims that it refused to allow the increasingly prominent Black performance artist Jade Montserrat to participate in a project for Tate Exchange

Insta' gratification

Aimee Dawson, our live editor, looks at how the worlds of art and social media collide


Why all museums need an in-house TikToker

Keen to capitalise on the social media channel's rising profile in the art world, the Peabody Essex Museum hired two dedicated creators in residence

How TikTok coaches art world institutions to go viral

The social media platform's lifestyle and education team has been offering services to companies like Sotheby's to help improve content and grow followings

Does coverage of Sotheby's Freddie Mercury sales show that auctions are perfect TikTok fodder?

Videos of bidding battles for the Queen frontman's possessions resulted in the auction house doubling its TikTok followers in less than a week

Instagram’s new tools prove ‘shadowbanning’ is real—and now artists are trapped

Many users are beginning to wonder if the platform's guidelines have any positive value

Art Decoded

Twice a month, digital artist Gretchen Andrew explains new technology and its impact on art and the art world

What are DAOs? How blockchain-governed collectives might revolutionise the art world

Egalitarian and democratic, Decentralised Autonomous Organisations are powerful collecting forces with the potential to reshape the industry

Adventures with Van Gogh

Martin Bailey, our long-standing correspondent and expert on Van Gogh, tells us about his meticulous investigations and discoveries about this most intriguing artist. Published on Fridays.


Van Gogh in 2023: the best-ever series of exhibitions

Other highlights include the dramatic recovery of a stolen painting and an astonishing donation

Was Van Gogh's olive grove landscape another Nazi-era 'forced sale'?

We uncover the tangled tale of the painting controversially sold off by New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1972 and now in an Athens museum

I met the oldest woman in the world—who shared her memories of Van Gogh in Arles

Madame Jeanne Calment, who lived to be 122, recalled meeting the artist as a child

Van Gogh's Tokyo Sunflowers: Was it a Nazi forced sale? And is the painting now worth $250m?

Bought for a Japanese museum in 1987, the masterpiece has just been claimed by the heirs of a Jewish Berlin banker

Reality Bites

The art world, long-thought to be immune to, is now having to acknowledge urgent realities of pandemics, climate crisis, wars, energy and food shortages, mass migration and inflation. In a new regular column, Scott Reyburn and Anny Shaw report on what auction houses, gallerists, artists and other players are doing—or not doing—about it.

The elephant in the booth: the environmental toll of art fairs

With a host of identikit international fairs showing works already viewed online and often already sold, is there a point to generating all those air miles?

Can art actually help improve Saudi Arabia's abject human rights record?

Culture is being used by Saudi Arabia to project an image of a state that “enriches lives, celebrates national identity and builds understanding between people”

Five years after #MeToo, what has changed for female artists?

Recently, some major galleries have signed high-profile women, many of whom launched artistic careers long before the industry cared

Pakistani artists raise money for its devastating floods—and question which causes garner art world support

Osman Yousefzada and nine others sold specially created prints, but Pakistan’s worst natural disaster in living memory has yet to galvanise the industry

All hot air on climate action? Auction houses pledge to cut CO2 while organising global tours for star lots

In our new series Reality Bites, we assess whether the art market's key players are addressing the urgent issues affecting the wider world