This article is part of the Artnet Intelligence Report, The Year Ahead 2025. Our analysis of the second half of the year’s market trends provides a data-driven overview of the current state of the art world, highlighting auction results and trends, and spotlights the evolving tastes in a turbulent market.
Fine-art sales at auction totaled $10.2 billion in 2024, down 27.3 percent year over year, which roughly parallels the pandemic-related contraction of 2020, when sales dropped 22.3 percent, to $10.2 billion.
The decline extends a downward trend that began around two years ago, amid interest rate hikes and rising geopolitical uncertainty. That instability continued into 2024, becoming more pronounced as a record number of countries, including the U.S. and U.K. (two of the top three global art markets) held elections. China’s economic slowdown further dampened total sales.
Although all price brackets saw contractions in sales, the highest end of the market experienced the sharpest falloff. Just three works sold for more than $50 million each last year, compared with six in 2023 and more than 10 in 2022. Many major works had lower estimates than they would have had previously, and they frequently sold near or below their low estimates.
René Magritte’s L’Empire des Lumières (1954), which sold for $121 million at Christie’s last year.
The number of lots sold in 2024 was 388,007, the second-highest annual total since 2014. Combined with the decline in high-priced work, this drove the average price of art sold at auction down 26 percent.