In early November, Christie's auction house auctioned off the art collection of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. The US$1.5 billion raised from the sale of the collection set an all-time record, consolidating the growth that had been observed in the art market since early 2022.

According to the 2022 global survey of collectors, published by Art Basel and UBS (SEE HERE), spending on art in the first half of 2022 nearly doubled that of 2019, with an average of US$180,000 per collector. The percentage of collectors acquiring works over US$1 million also jumped sharply, from 12% in 2021 to 23% this year. There are other interesting findings in the survey. Interest in digital art, for example: 17% of spending was devoted to this, including 10% to NTF artworks, which reached an average price of US$46,000. There is also a generation gap. While 55% of baby boomer respondents prefer to shop in person at a gallery, only 28% of Generation Z respondents share this preference.

Seventy-eight percent of respondents were optimistic about the market, with more than half (55%) willing to buy works during the second half of 2022. The question that arose following the auction of the Allen collection in November is whether this record-breaking auction signified the ceiling of the market, depleting a significant portion of collectors' budgets in an environment of global recession. The answer seems to favor the optimists, however. Shortly after the sale of the Allen collection, the Solinger collection of modern art was put up for sale, which exceeded pre-auction estimates, with 60% of the works selling above the highest estimated price.