A survey of global collectors by Art Basel and UBS released on Thursday revealed the biggest drivers for buying art this year were motivated by personal concerns, such as self-identity, and that buyers are taking time to do research before making a purchase.
“There’s a series of indicators that tended to hint toward a slightly more cautious
and thought-through, or maybe slightly risk averse in some cases, approach to buying,” says Clare McAndrew, a cultural economist and founder of ArtEconomics in Dublin, who authored a report on the survey results.
The study also found that a large percentage of the 2,828 collectors surveyed—77%—are optimistic about how art will perform in the next six months, and that 54% planned to buy art in the next year, the same as in 2022.
That optimism is consistent with the spending patterns and attitudes of the surveyed collectors so far this year. The report showed spending on fine and decorative works of art and antiques among the wealthy individuals surveyed has been resilient. Even as global economic challenges mount, respondents spent US$573,960 in just the first six months of the year, up from US$541,240 in all of last year.
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The median expenditure—which reduces the influence of a few big purchases—was US$65,000 this year, the same as all of 2022. The figures indicate “the year as a whole could reflect a substantial rise if spending continues,” the report said.
The survey of collectors in 11 markets worldwide is the most expansive conducted in the eight years ArtEconomics and UBS have studied collector behavior. Participants are active collectors with US$1 million in investable assets or more who spent at least US$10,000 in 2021 and 2022, and US$5,000 in the first half of this year, on art and antiques, a criteria that doesn’t account for many established collectors who aren’t currently buying art.
Of the wealthy individuals surveyed, most—61%—had assets of between US$1 million and US$10 million, and 9% were ultra wealthy, with assets of more than US$50 million.
The report offers considerable detail on collecting habits and behaviors across a large group, and finds that spending by wealthy collectors was strong in the first half of this year, yet McAndrew notes that it’s a just snapshot of views from the “huge sea of collectors out there” and that it illustrates their view at just a moment in time. This year’s survey, for instance, was conducted between July and September, capturing views against a backdrop of global economic uncertainty and geopolitical risks, but before the outbreak of war in the Middle East.
Overall, the collectors surveyed reported allocating 19% of their wealth to art—including real estate and private business assets. That’s down from 24% last year and 22% in each of the two previous years, the report said. The lower allocation may reflect the fact that this year’s report surveyed fewer collectors with assets of US$10 million or more (39% this year vs. 57% last year), as the percentage allocation tends to rise with an individual’s wealth. Nearly 40% of the ultra wealthy allocated 30% or more to art, the survey found.
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To get at the motivations for buying art, McAndrew worked with Andrew Dillon, a professor of psychology at the University of Texas, to devise questions that would be more revealing of collector behavior than she had been able to glean in the past.
Collectors previously often chose the same responses—with many citing “passion” as a motivator, for instance—and, because past surveys allowed them to select several responses, many would choose all of them, McAndrew says.
This year, survey participants could only choose one response among six motivations, and few (14%) selected “a compulsion, passion, or addiction” to collecting,” while 37% chose, “self-focused motivations including self-identity or self-esteem, personal pleasure, the desire to improve one’s self-image, or other aesthetic and decorative drivers.” It was the dominant choice across generations, from Gen Z (under age 26) to Boomers (aged 59 to 76).
“When you put things in a bucket of how you define yourself and your self-esteem
and the things that it brings to you personally—that was the thing people anchored on,” McAndrew says.
Of those surveyed—28%—said they bought art for “financial motivations,” yet only 10% described themselves as art “investors,” according to a report on the survey results that was authored by McAndrew.
Overall, the survey found 44% of collectors do a lot of research on artists before they buy a work, up from 37% in 2021, while only 18% buy works on impulse—down 3% from a year earlier.
The results run counter to a common view that collectors are “impulsive when, in actual fact, most of the collectors that we survey do go through a multi-stage process when they’re buying art,” McAndrew says. Though survey results such as these don’t provide hard-and-fast data, “it does kind of hint toward, possibly, a more cautious approach to collecting.”
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The report also revealed that a lot of the wealthiest collectors understand the financial impact of collecting and rely on leverage and credit to buy new works in addition to reselling pieces. Among all collectors, 44% bought and sold works within three to five years, the survey found, and 43% used credit or loaned funds, to purchase works.
Although the growth of the art lending industry has been evident over the last decade, the report, again, while not being definitive, provides some insight into the extent of its use, McAndrew says.
“It’s is a snapshot of the fact that [high-net-worth collectors] do use these
facilities even when interest rates may have been high in some regions,” she says.
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