Art Galleries Increasingly Pivoting to Online Sales
The Covid-19 pandemic has had a lasting impact on art galleries, according to an Artsy report published yesterday (April 26), which found that online sales for most galleries have either remained stable or grown over the last year.
Online sales allow for galleries to connect with new collectors, with more than half of galleries claiming their online buyers are primarily new customers. Respondents also said that sales are boosted when artwork pricing is displayed online, a phenomenon the online art brokerage has been studying since late 2018, according to Alexander Forbes, Artsy’s head of galleries.
“It gets you past that first barrier of entry,” he said, adding that younger collectors don’t want to deal with the hassle of requesting prices and potentially discovering they can’t afford a work. “It’s just representative of the digital evolution of many of these more traditional industries.”
Only 23 percent of the gallerists and art dealers surveyed by Artsy said online sale volume decreased in 2022 compared to 2021. The report also found the pandemic influenced other sales and marketing methods, with more than 60 percent of galleries claiming email newsletters are their most important marketing channel, followed by gallery websites, in-person events and social media.
Why are galleries increasingly using Instagram?
Online marketplaces were the highest-growth source of artwork sales for 45 percent of galleries, followed by Instagram at 32 percent.
Instagram is used far more prominently among younger galleries, specifically those that have been open for less than three years, with 24 percent of young galleries saying the platform sells the most artwork compared to 13 percent of older galleries.
“Instagram has been a growing trend over the past several years,” according to Forbes, who said the platform helps people discover new artists and galleries field inquiries from art collectors interested in a show or artwork.
Younger galleries also sell more artwork to younger collectors, with 59 percent saying buyers in the 35 to 55 age group are their highest spenders. Only 19 percent marked the 55 and older group as top spenders, compared to 41 percent of older galleries.
Artsy also noted that galleries don’t have confidence in the future of works currently ranked in the most important genres of contemporary art, such as figurative and abstract paintings. Meanwhile, gallerists said genres that are currently less important for them, such as queer, video and Afrofuturism art, are expected to double in importance in the future.
“Artists responding to the issues of their time resonates with collectors of that same period,” said Forbes. It isn’t unusual to see new iterations of artwork styles during financial crises, he said, recalling the economic pullback of the 1980s, which subsequently saw the proliferation of installation art.
The effects of inflation can also be seen in sale prices, as more than 68 percent of galleries reported increased prices for primary-market works and 48 percent noted the same for the secondary-market.
Pricing on the primary-market has been affected so significantly because the market doesn’t have as much public data for comparable works like the secondary-market, so gallerists can raise prices without as much pushback from collectors, said Forbes, who also noted that the primary-market is more exposed to inflationary pressures.