In focus: Art market trends in Miami and the US

Explore findings from our recent art market reports - A Survey of Global Collecting in 2022 and The Role of Cities in the US Art Ecosystem – which highlight the thriving art scene in Miami ahead of Art Basel’s 20^th anniversary fair and key collecting trends in the US art market.

Overall, there is a positive outlook among US HNW collectors, with 84% of those surveyed expressing optimism about the art market over the medium-term and 57% are planning to attend art fairs both local and overseas.

In the Cities report, Miami is listed as one of the top-five US cities when it comes to the number of galleries, art institutions and exhibitions it supports. It is also one of the top cities that collectors most want to visit art events – second only to New York.

Work by women artists is gaining ground

Although the two reports did not cover all the same territories, they both indicate progress over the past five years in the representation of female artists. While still unbalanced, the HNW collector surveys showed the share of female artists in collections has increased to 44% in the US – up significantly from the global average of 33% in 2018. The Cities report also found that while the share of female artists in commercial galleries in Miami is lower than in other major cities, Miami stands out in the US as the only major city where commercial galleries have higher risk appetite for female emerging artists than for their male counterparts.

Strong support for local artists

Signs of home bias in the US appear in the report on collectors, with data from Wondeur AI showing that 89% of the total exhibitions by artists based in US take place locally. Emerging artists also tend to gain most exposure in the US, where home-based exhibitions account for 94% of the total. HNW collectors in the US also had some of the highest shares of local artists in collections – at 59%.¹

The Survey of Global Collecting also highlights that there has been a marked increase in philanthropy, with 56% of HNW collectors in the US saying they plan to donate works of art to institutions in the next 12 months. Climate change and sustainability are also on collectors’ minds, with a majority globally prepared to pay a premium of up to 25% of the price of a work of art to reduce the environmental impact of its purchase and delivery.

¹ The term ‘home market’ is defined as the country where an artist exhibits most frequently (as opposed to the country of their birth or nationality).