The Art Market Podcast

In Episode 15 of the Art Market Podcast, Georgina and Tom are joined by Melanie Gerlis, art market correspondent for the Financial Times and author of such tomes as Art as an Investment? and The Art Fair Story.

Melanie makes the case that art is not a good investment, and they trace the whole "art as an asset class" idea back to Peter Wilson's Times Sotheby's index and its deliberate courting of Wall Street money.

They dig into the galleries that sell overvalued work to first-time buyers and what actually turns a rich person into a collector.

Next, they explore the strange new economics of art fairs, where the crowds increasingly come for the selfie rather than the sale.

Finally, Mel answers the big question: if the number of billionaires has tripled, why has the art market sat flat at around sixty billion for twenty years?

Enjoy! __________________________________________________________

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In Episode 14 of the Art Market Podcast, Georgina and Tom welcome their first ever guest: Jon Sharples, the London-based art lawyer who spends his working life at the legal coalface of the art market.

They dive what auction manipulation, and the business model in which investors buy dozens of works by an unknown artist and manufacture a secondary market from nothing.

Next, they turn to the wave of London gallery insolvencies, from Blain Southern to Stephen Friedman, and why artists in the UK are so badly protected when their gallery goes under: no obligation to segregate artists' funds, contracts that evaporate on insolvency, and warehouse liens artists never knew they had agreed to.

Plus: the misunderstood role of Agency Law, Artist's Agent, Damien Hirst and the dodgy dated works, the collapse of the Artists Pension Trust.

Enjoy! ____________________________________________________________

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In the first Question and Answers episode, Georgina and Tom open the mailbag for the first ever listener questions episode.

They answer questions about Gus, the T. rex that made $50 million at auction, why is the art market so vulnerable to fraudsters? What really killed the Chinese contemporary art market? And finally, are buyer's premiums at auction houses getting out of control at nearly 30%?

Enjoy! _________________________________________________________

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This week, Georgina reports back from Riga Contemporary in Latvia, where the stands cost only €500 (!), and asks what it takes to build an art market in a small country from nothing.

She then turns to Classic Week in London, where a nineteenth-century Laocoön made £13.6 million against a £2 million estimate, and questions whether young collectors really are flooding into the Old Master market.

In the second half, Tom works through a stack of recent reports on women in the art world, looking at the various headwinds and tailwinds women artist and professionals face, particularly in middle age, where half of women aged 35 to 44 are considering leaving the industry, and what the "glass escalator" has to do with any of it.

Enjoy!

Reports mentioned in the Episode:

Women Artists Report - June 2026

AWITA X artnet Survey

SML Art Market Salary Report 2025

The Art Basel & UBS Survey of Global Collecting 2025

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In this episode, Tom and Georgina dig beneath the headlines from the June London auctions, where a £458 million total looked like a triumph, until you notice that 65% of it came from a single sale. Tom asks whether London is really back, or still stuck in a post-Brexit slump, and tells the extraordinary story of Lewis himself.

Georgina reports from the more traditional end of the market, visiting the Treasure House Fair and the invitation-only Studiolo, held this year in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey.

Enjoy! _____________________________________________________________ ✉️Email questions at [email protected] _____________________________________________________________Subscribe for weekly episodes exploring the global art market, its players, and its hidden dynamics.

In the 10th episode (!!) of the Art Market Podcast, Tom reports from Art Basel in Basel, quality on the floor, the new “Basel Exclusive” initiative, the spectacular Basel Social Club, and whether the original fair can hold its crown as Art Basel Paris closes in and the market deglobalises.

Georgina then turns to Pace’s dramatic downsizing - fifty artists dropped and a twenty percent headcount cut – as a way into the bigger question: is the mega-gallery model fundamentally broken? Together they trace the shift from the Castelli artist-nurturer to the Gagosian business model, and why so many galleries can no longer compete. Enjoy!

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In Episode 9 of the Art Market Podcast, Georgina reports from Art Warsaw on Poland’s remarkable transformation, a flourishing post-EU economy, serious new collectors and institutions, and world-class artists, but are some things still holding the market back?

Tom then examines the growing world of the artist’s agent, from Joe Hage’s all-encompassing HENI model with Damien Hirst, Gerhard Richter, and Peter Doig, to the wave of dealers leaving mega-galleries to represent top artists directly, and what it signals about artists outgrowing the gallery system. Enjoy!

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In Episode 8 of the Art Market Podcast, Georgina and Tom dissect a monumental week of New York auctions – the billion-dollar SI Newhouse sale at Christie’s, the Mnuchin estate at Sotheby’s, record Rothkos, a Pollock that broke records, but also the works that quietly lost money, revealing a discriminating flight-to-safety market.

In the second half, Tom takes a deep dive into third-party guarantees: where they came from, why they now cover the vast majority of evening sales, how they turn auctions into pre-sold theatre, and what might happen if a major museum one day publicly guaranteed a work. Enjoy!

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In Episode 7 of the Art Market Podcast, Georgina and Tom dedicate the whole episode to the Venice Biennale, fresh from the opening week. They explain what a biennale actually is, how its supposedly non-commercial pavilions and museum shows have become prime selling territory, and how dealers leverage Venice’s aura of prestige, from Christie’s “Ghost Pavilion” to gallery-funded museum exhibitions repositioning market-driven artists.

They also confront the politics that overshadowed this edition: the Russian and Israeli pavilion controversies, the jury resignations, the strike, and the quieter ways conflict is reshaping who collectors will buy from and who artists sell to.

Enjoy!

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In Episode 6 of the Art Market Podcast, Georgina unpacks the explosive new Modigliani catalogue raisonné from Marc Restellini with its 100 newly accepted works and 13 demotions, and the high-stakes minefield of authentication, lawsuits, and chilled expert opinion.

Tom then asks why so many tech “solutions” for the art market fail, using the merger of Artnet and Artsy as a lens on why the art market resists the efficiency and transparency that outsiders keep trying to impose.

Finally, Georgina closes with Art Monte-Carlo, a revamped, glitzy fair now under ownership and seemingly chasing synergies between art, supercars, and luxury real estate. Enjoy!

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