Market Watch: Market Editor Report May 2025
An Image of Celia (State I) © David Hockney 1986
Market Reports
Just when the art market seemed like it might coast on familiar themes, May delivered something deeper. Yes, the New York auctions were subdued, and yes, the usual debates about estimates and bidding strategies resurfaced - but the real story this month wasn’t just about what sold. It was about how decisions are being made.
Across multiple corners of the industry, structural shifts took centre stage this month. Ari Emanuel launched a private investment fund for Frieze. Art Basel announced its expansion into Qatar. And at the end of the month, Beowolff Capital acquired Artnet and took majority control of Artsy - a signal that the future of the art market may depend less on what’s on the wall, and more on who controls the systems that define value. The market is moving toward centralisation and its data that’s powering the shift. Infrastructure is no longer just about access or visibility, but about the systems that collect, analyse, and monetise data at scale. And in many ways, the print market - long rooted in clarity, scale, and repeatability - was already there.
But first - the May auctions.
May 2025 Auction Results: What the Market Correction Means for Sellers
For those tracking the numbers, here’s where we landed: excluding Impressionist sales, the total hammer value across Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Phillips in May 2025 dropped 43% from 2023 and 26% from 2024. Yes, market contraction is real - but it’s not in crisis. It reflects fewer eight-figure consignments. Phillips didn’t offer one. Christie’s hit the low end of estimates with theirs on offer. Sotheby’s withdrew a $70 million Giacometti and couldn’t place, a rather symbolically coloured, $30 million Pepto Bismol-pink Warhol Electric Chair - a surprising result for a pivotal work from the Death and Disaster series.
But moments like these don’t completely point to weak demand. They suggest a broader recalibration. Ultra-high-value works now feel more like monuments to a previous collecting era - better suited to private institutions than private homes. In today’s market, it’s not just about value on paper, but how a work fits into evolving collecting behaviours.
That shift is happening in real time. With the generational wealth transfer underway, the next wave of collectors isn’t just inheriting portfolios - they’re reshaping them. They want transparency, accessibility, and cultural relevance. That’s part of why prints and editions - long rooted in pricing clarity, reproducibility, and subject matter breadth - are gaining momentum. This isn’t about hype. It’s about structure, and formats that fit the way people want to collect now.
The numbers support it: while average sale value dipped from $97.5M in 2023 to $75.7M in 2025, we have to assume this stark decline is largely a result of more major consignments moving through private channels - not necessarily a drop in demand. In fact, the number of unsold lots is down 61% year-on-year, and more works are meeting or beating estimates in day sales.
These market shifts are already reflected in our updated Seller’s Guides. Explore the latest insights on Warhol, Lichtenstein’s standout print performance at Sotheby’s, and Hockney’s selective results - each guide offers sellers clearer, and current, benchmarks in an evolving landscape.
--> Warhol Seller's Guide
--> Lichtenstein Seller's Guide
--> Hockney Seller's Guide
What the €65M Artnet Takeover Signals for the Future of the Art Market
As we reach the midpoint of the 2025 art calendar, the biggest story wasn’t the $40 million Mondrian, the unsold $70 million Giacometti, or even the stellar Roy Lichtenstein print collection that lit up Sotheby’s Contemporary Day Sale - though that was arguably the most exciting moment out of all the sales rooms. The deeper shift was structural: a change in how the market is being built and run.
On May 28, Beowolff Capital, led by former Goldman Sachs partner Andrew Wolff, acquired a 30% stake in Artnet from Weng Fine Art for €11.25 per share, giving Beowolff majority control at 65%. The €65 million deal - the largest M&A transaction in the German art market - includes plans to delist Artnet from the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and extend the offer to remaining shareholders aiming for full ownership.
The acquisition wasn’t exactly unexpected. Artnet, once a pioneer of online price databases and auction listings, had long struggled to keep pace with modern demands. Its magazine shuttered in 2012, innovation slowed, and while its data remained valuable, the general view is that it failed to fully embrace the e-commerce, algorithmic, and user experience advances that competitors capitalised on. Multiple takeover attempts have swirled since at least 2013 - including a hostile bid from Redline Capital - but none had materialised until now.
What’s different this time is the bigger picture. Alongside the Artnet news, Beowolff also revealed a majority investment in Artsy. That move reframes the narrative. It’s not about rescuing legacy brands - it’s about combining reach and intelligence. Pairing Artnet’s pricing and data backbone with Artsy’s marketplace access is a bold strategy to create a more connected, data-driven art platform.
Beowolff described the twin acquisitions as “foundational steps” toward building a group of market-leading businesses - defined by their control over data, pricing tools, and decision-making systems. Which raises the key question: who will control the digital foundations of tomorrow’s art market?
Where Strategy Meets Structure: How Frieze, Basel and LVMH Are Playing the Long Game
The major moves this May weren’t just about expansion, they also signalled a deeper shift toward systems and intelligence.
To put this into context, Frieze’s newly announced investment fund, unveiled by Ari Emanuel in May, hints at a future where data across its ecosystem - VIP flows, sales behaviour, exhibitor demand - can be used not just to shape fairs, but to drive financial strategy. Frieze Art Fair isn’t just organising booths, the move points to a model where the data insight gained from fair attendance becomes leverage.
Also in May, Art Basel announced it will launch a new fair in Qatar in February 2026. This move feels less like straightforward geographic expansion and more like a data-driven strategy - shaped by MCH Group’s analysis of collector density, spending power, and rising demand. The Middle East is clearly in the spotlight for global growth, and as mentioned in my five art market predictions, I’m still betting on a new record for a blue chip edition set at a middle eastern regional auction at some point this year.
Even LVMH’s Hockney retrospective at the Fondation Louis Vuitton fits this pattern. Blockbuster exhibitions of major artists suggest how data metrics like foot traffic, engagement, and cultural resonance are increasingly analysed as strategic tools - positioning its maisons not just as tastemakers, but as strategic players in the wider art economy.
None of this is coincidental. These shifts reflect a market increasingly shaped by those who build, and monetise, the systems of influence. And for prints, a category long defined by pricing clarity, scale, and trackability, this is already familiar ground.
What the Print Market Already Knew
The scramble for control isn’t just about high-profile acquisitions - it’s about redefining how value is created, measured, and distributed across the art world. Platforms like Artnet, Artsy, Frieze, and Art Basel are shifting focus to own the infrastructure that shapes visibility, pricing, and access - all of which increasingly run on data.
But while much of the market is now playing catch-up, the prints sector has operated this way for years. With editioned formats, stable pricing, and long-standing auction records, prints were built for scale and transparency - a natural fit for the systems now being built around data.
That’s exactly why we’ve developed tools like MyPortfolio and the Trading Floor around this category. These aren’t just dashboards - they’re live, algorithm-supported platforms designed to help collectors navigate value in real time, using the same structured inputs the rest of the market is now trying to adopt: provenance, edition size, and sale history.
We’ve been leaning into this shift for some time. Earlier this year, Lindsay Dewar and I unpacked these dynamics in our ArtTactic + MyArtBroker reports - from February’s look at David Hockney to May’s deep dive into Roy Lichtenstein. Each one built to interpret the market through metrics, not just commentary.
Because the conversation has moved on from what sells. It’s about who’s buying, how fast, and why. And if consolidation continues at this pace, it will be the platforms that pair data fluency with deep expertise that define what comes next.
Looking Ahead
As we head into June, all signs point to continued momentum in the prints and editions market. Our upcoming Collector’s Survey, where our community members will be invited to take part, will offer deeper insight into how collecting habits are evolving in 2025, from generational shifts to platform preferences.
Meanwhile, we’ll be watching June’s print sales closely - not just for final prices, but for what they reveal about buyer behaviour, private market flow, and which artists are driving confidence. Watch this space for continued coverage across our reports, and real-time insights from MyPortfolio as the second half of the year takes shape.
