ZURICH: The global art market experienced another uptick in 2018, helped by an increase in the spending power of millennials, a report published by UBS and Art Basel said on Friday.
A survey of wealthy individuals conducted by UBS and art economist Clare McAndrew for the report found millennials were buying art more actively and frequently taking to the Internet to do so. It found that more of them were willing to shell out big money on art than their older peers.
They also provided a boost for female artists.
“For a generation that might never own a car, their appetite for buying art is encouraging,” UBS Group Chief Marketing Officer Johan Jervøe told Reuters.
“It may be a reflection of the unique and often experiential qualities of art and collectibles as long-term assets.”
Overall sales in the art market grew 7 percent to $67.4 billion in 2018, according to UBS and Art Basel’s third annual art market report.
People between 22 and 37 years of age made up nearly half of the wealthy art buyers who regularly spent $1 million or more on an artwork over the past two years, the survey found, despite representing just over a third of the high-net-worth individuals surveyed.
The results of the survey, which was conducted in Britain, Germany, Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong, offered a silver lining for the art world as geopolitical and economic worries have weighed on overall sentiment.
As millennials grow into greater wealth, and benefit from a generational shift in wealth inherited from aging parents, their wealth could reach $24 trillion by 2020, according to Deloitte.
Millennials’ spending habits could provide significant potential for both online sales and art’s squeezed middle, Jervøe said, benefiting the industry’s overall health.
This younger generation of collectors with over $1 million in household assets to spend or invest helped buoy the digital art marketplace to $6 billion sales last year.
And a majority of them also took to photo-sharing social media platform Instagram to source and buy art.
Between 2016 and 2018, 93 percent of the millennials made purchases online, spending $106,930 on average, while the slightly older Generation X — between 38 and 52 years of age -spent around half a million dollars on an average web purchase, but did so with less frequency.
Wealthy millennials boosting the art market
Wealthy millennials boosting the art market
- People between 22 and 37 years of age made up nearly half of the wealthy art buyers who regularly spent $1 million or more on an artwork over the past two years
- Millennials’ spending habits could provide significant potential for both online sales and art’s squeezed middle
Sotheby’s to bring coveted Rembrandt lion drawing to Diriyah
DUBAI: Later this month, Sotheby’s will bring to Saudi Arabia what it describes as the most important Rembrandt drawing to appear at auction in 50 years. Estimated at $15–20 million, “Young Lion Resting” comes to market from The Leiden Collection, one of the world’s most important private collections of 17th-century Dutch and Flemish art.
The drawing will be on public view at Diriyah’s Bujairi Terrace from Jan. 24 to 25, alongside the full contents of “Origins II” — Sotheby’s forthcoming second auction in Saudi Arabia — ahead of its offering at Sotheby’s New York on Feb. 4, 2026. The entire proceeds from the sale will benefit Panthera, the world’s leading organization dedicated to the conservation of wild cats. The work is being sold by The Leiden Collection in partnership with its co-owner, philanthropist Jon Ayers, the chairman of the board of Panthera.
Established in 2006, Panthera was founded by the late wildlife biologist Dr. Alan Rabinowitz and Dr. Thomas S. Kaplan. The organization is actively engaged in the Middle East, where it is spearheading the reintroduction of the critically endangered Arabian leopard to AlUla, in partnership with the Royal Commission for AlUla.
“Young Lion Resting” is one of only six known Rembrandt drawings of lions and the only example remaining in private hands. Executed when Rembrandt was in his early to mid-thirties, the work captures the animal’s power and restless energy with striking immediacy, suggesting it was drawn from life. Long before Rembrandt sketched a lion in 17th-century Europe, lions roamed northwest Arabia, their presence still echoed in AlUla’s ancient rock carvings and the Lion Tombs of Dadan.
For Dr. Kaplan, the drawing holds personal significance as his first Rembrandt acquisition. From 2017 to 2024, he served as chairman of the International Alliance for the Protection of Heritage, of which Saudi Arabia is a founding member.
The Diriyah exhibition will also present, for the first time, the full range of works offered in “Origins II,” a 64-lot sale of modern and contemporary art, culminating in an open-air auction on Jan. 31 at 7.30 pm.
