The Summer Break

Every year, after Art Basel and the June auctions in London, the art world enters a kind of hiatus. It is almost like a summer break. When I see colleagues in Basel each June, I semi-jokingly tell them to have a great summer, the way we did growing up on the last day of school. There are no yearbooks to sign this time, though. Instead, we follow one another on Instagram as everyone heads off on their annual vacations.

I have never fully understood this summer break. The explanation I was given years ago is that collectors are traveling, less attentive to the market, and less likely to be in major cities visiting galleries or previewing auctions. Perhaps that logic was acceptable, even welcomed, during the frenzy of the last several years, when everyone could use the rest. But the market has changed. With more galleries closing or struggling financially, I think about what it must feel like to be a gallery owner staring down two months of limited sales while the overhead remains exactly the same. That is a daunting thought. Fewer sales also mean less income for artists themselves, a point that is not stressed nearly enough in the press or even in the industry’s own conversations.

Despite all of this, I have found the last few weeks to be rather busy. It is just a different kind of busy. It is the kind you make for yourself. With no fairs on the calendar and fewer gallery shows opening, I have shifted much of my focus to private sales, where there are some genuinely interesting opportunities right now.

In fact, I think the private sales market is an exciting place to be looking at the moment. There are great works out there, and they tend to come in two varieties. Some you have to chase. The most desirable works are often held in long-term collections by owners who are in no hurry to sell, and those opportunities have to be developed patiently, through relationships, over months or sometimes longer.

Others are more attainable than you might expect, sometimes at prices below the primary market. That says less about the quality of the works than it does about primary pricing, which for some artists has moved ahead of what the broader market will actually support.

Neither type of opportunity is easy to find. But when you do find the right work, you can make a meaningful acquisition, securing a work that becomes an important part of a client’s collection for many years. In a quieter season, while much of the market is away, that is often where the most interesting work gets done.

So I will keep wishing colleagues a happy summer break each June, but I will also keep working through it. Some of the best opportunities of the year do not wait for September.