If the London art trade is in some kind of a crisis, there were few signs of it this past week. The city was filled with art in museums and galleries and, of course, in the large white tents set up in Regents Park for Frieze London—not to mention in the endless communicating rooms at Somerset House, which was home to the 1-54 Art Fair for contemporary African art.
The city was also filled—as one prominent art advisor said—with every manner of the world’s wealthiest art collectors, who were ostensibly all looking to buy. You saw them hurrying through the occasional drizzle in Mayfair or stepping out of chauffeured Maybachs in Berkeley Square. Most of these buyers, according to the advisors I spoke with, picked up “bits and bobs,” but didn’t make any major purchases. If they left London empty-handed, it wasn’t the fault of rising interest rates or London’s galleries, but rather the lack of a compelling art-collecting thesis.
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