Gender, age and attitudes to threat is the main focus of the Artwork Basel and UBS Survey of World Amassing 2025, launched at this time. It finds that ladies seem to not solely be spending extra on artwork however are additionally extra doubtless to purchase work by an unknown artist than their male counterparts.
The 200-page-long report surveys 3,100 excessive web price people (HNWIs)—who’re energetic artwork consumers—in ten markets in mid-2025. The purpose is easy: to ascertain who’s shopping for what, the place, from whom and for a way a lot, so we would get a glimpse into the place the market is likely to be headed. A lot of the marketplace for “blue chip” artwork at this time is constructed upon the tastes of Boomer and Silent Technology collectors, largely male. However analysing the tastes and behaviours of Millennial and Gen Z consumers helps public sale homes, galleries and gala’s to foretell what the subsequent technology of collectors will need to purchase.
Ladies are particularly essential—the report says that by the top of 2024, ladies managed over a 3rd of worldwide wealth, a share that’s rising quick. In keeping with UBS’s 2025 Gender-Lens Funding Report, an estimated $32 trillion in world spending is managed by ladies and 75% of discretionary spending globally is anticipated to be managed by them inside 5 years.
Therefore why the economist Clare McAndrew, the report’s writer, was decided that this 12 months’s pattern could be evenly cut up between women and men as a way to analyse gender variations in gathering habits, in addition to overlaying a broad age vary as a way to assess how artwork shopping for may change with the subsequent technology—74% of respondents had been Millennial and Gen Z.
McAndrew stresses that these gathering experiences usually are not “a temperature test of the market”, as is the case with the annual Artwork Basel and UBS Artwork Market Report, additionally written by McAndrew and revealed every spring. As an alternative, they take a broader group of rich folks and ask them to self-assess their tastes and spending.
Generational divide
Though the pervading backdrop to the report is one among continued geopolitical and financial uncertainty, coupled with tariffs and elevated impediments to cross border commerce and freedom of motion, HNWI continued to actively spend on artwork, antiques and collectibles, in keeping with the report. The HNWIs sampled spent a median of 20% of their wealth on their artwork collections (up from 15% in 2024), whereas ultra-high web price people (UHNWIs) with over $50m in property averaged 28%. Throughout all respondents, common spending totalled $438,990, with collectors shopping for a median of 14 works. Boomers, though the smallest pattern, had been the largest spenders, at nearly $993,000, adopted by millennials at $523,000.
However, curiously, Gen Z purchasers had been spending comparatively extra of their wealth on artwork (26%) and 90% of Gen Z respondents who had inherited artworks mentioned they deliberate to maintain them, whereas 80% throughout all age ranges deliberate to cross on their collections to their youngsters.
Sneaker heads
The report additionally checked out how tastes and gathering priorities fluctuate throughout generations. Whereas Boomers tended to focus on shopping for work, the tastes of Millennials and Gen Z had been broader. Millennials spent probably the most on ornamental artwork, design and jewelry. And opposite to perceived knowledge that they’re extra serious about experiences than materials possessions, Gen Z spent probably the most on common in all different sectors together with purses (on a degree with Boomers), traditional automobiles, boats, jets and 5 occasions that of different age teams on sneakers—that’s $19,440 on common on second-hand footwear.
Regardless of the crash of the NFT market, digital artwork is surprisingly standard—23% of the HNWIs mentioned they deliberate to purchase digital artwork, up from 19% within the earlier survey, with 26% of Gen Z collectors saying they deliberate to purchase digital works.
However general, throughout all ages and genders, work stay the preferred style, with 48% of HNWIs planning to purchase one over the subsequent 12 months, adopted by sculptures at 37%. Gen Z respondents once more seem probably the most acquisitive apart from Boomers, with 40% saying they deliberate to purchase sculpture, increased than Gen X or Millennials. This portray and sculpture dominance performed out throughout genders too, with 41% of girls saying they deliberate to purchase work and 22% sculpture, in comparison with 54% males planning to purchase work and 40% sculpture. Ladies had increased curiosity than males in shopping for all mediums besides work, sculptures and works on paper—for instance pictures, installations, textile-based artwork and digital artwork.
The final is an fascinating one. Regardless of being a male-dominated space, the share of digital artwork in feminine HNWIs’ collections (at 15%) was increased than in males’s (at 11%).
Ladies are gaining growing clout general as gathering powers. In 2024 (the final full 12 months of knowledge), HNW ladies spent 46% greater than their male friends, a phenomenon pushed by Millennial and Gen Z ladies, who outspent their male friends. Millennial ladies mentioned they spent a median of $643,700 in 2024, one of many highest general, whereas Gen Z ladies spent $537,400, greater than double that of males the identical age. Millennial ladies in Mainland China had one of many highest annual spends, averaging $3.9m in 2024, whereas these in Japan spent simply over $1m.
“Ladies are going to be a really highly effective demographic,” McAndrew says. “Mainland China is all the time an outlier in these surveys, however once I see one thing persistently, 12 months after 12 months, in these surveys it means it’s fairly a severe factor.” She provides: “Regardless that we speak lots a few drop on the excessive finish of the market, there are nonetheless these bizarrely excessive spending pockets, like these ladies in China, Japan and Brazil, too, who spend far more than their male counterparts.”
Previous experiences haven’t discovered a correlation between whether or not ladies usually tend to purchase work made by ladies. However this newest report does—on common, 49% of works within the collections of girls had been by feminine artists, in comparison with 40% in males’s collections. In ladies’s collections within the US this rose to 55% and in Japan to 54%.
Danger takers
Opposite to the stereotype of girls being extra risk-averse—financially and in any other case—the report finds that feminine responded had been extra open to purchasing works by newly found, untested artists. In 2025, 55% of girls mentioned they’d typically or incessantly purchased works by unknown artists, in comparison with 44% of males, even if 52% of all members mentioned they considered such acquisitions as excessive threat.
“We requested an entire collection of questions on threat aversion in numerous areas, every part from monetary and funding threat to social conditions to healthcare, it was fascinating,” McAndrew tells The Artwork Newspaper. “I needed to do a number of background studying to border the questions and all the tutorial papers say that ladies are extra threat averse…Amy [Whitaker] made an excellent level that it’s the implications they face that make ladies extra threat averse. When a person tries one thing, we are saying ‘oh nicely, he gave it a go’, whereas if I lady tries one thing and it doesn’t work, they typically face extra stringent critique.”
Whitaker, an Affiliate Professor at New York College in visible arts administration, and Roman Kräussl, a professor of finance at Bayes Enterprise College, dig into the subject of gender variations in threat taking of their essay throughout the report. It’s removed from clear reduce and threat is difficult to quantify—as Whitaker and Kräussl level out: “Danger is implicitly tied to return, and return is judged in a different way by completely different folks.”
McAndrew additionally makes the purpose that, no matter gender, respondents tended to be extra threat averse when it got here to purchasing artwork in comparison with their monetary investments: “It might be that artwork is extra of a social factor, that should you end up to purchase one thing that’s a ‘dud’, it’s socially embarrassing and folks may choose you, in a method they wouldn’t should you misplaced cash on a fund.” This, McAndrew thinks, feeds into the celebrity artist phenomenon, the place many individuals purchase a really slim group of artists: “The most important solution to scale back threat is to simply purchase what everybody else is shopping for.”
Gross sales channels
The channels by way of which HNWIs desire to purchase can be delved into within the report. Whereas the overwhelming majority of gross sales had been accomplished by way of galleries and sellers (83% in 2024 and the primary half of 2025), whether or not in individual, on-line or at a good, the proportion of these utilizing public sale to purchase artwork dropped, from 74% in 2023 to 49% in 2024/25. The youthful the collector, the much less reliant they look like on conventional promoting platforms equivalent to auctions and galleries, preferring to purchase extra broadly by way of a spread of means. And this performs into one of many largest modifications from earlier surveys—the marked rise in direct from artist gross sales, now the second-most standard channel throughout all markets, in keeping with the report.
Of all of the HNWIs surveyed, 63% had purchased works straight from an artist, a pointy rise from 27% in 2023 and 43% in 2022. Most of those gross sales had been made by way of artists’ studios (43%), whereas 37% of HNWIs had commissioned a piece (up from 15% in 2023) and 35% had purchased works by way of Instagram.
“Direct from artist gross sales accounted for round 20% of spending, which is appreciable,” McAndrew says. “If that’s indicative of what’s going on [in the market], then we must try to discover a solution to seize that knowledge. There does appear to be an urge for food amongst collectors for purchasing direct from artists.”
General, does McAndrew thinks there are indicators of stabilisation out there? “I believe the truth that shopping for plans are okay, 40% of individuals are planning to purchase artwork, is encouraging,” she says. “There appear to be pockets of actually sturdy exercise—Brazil, as an example, stood out. There’s extra folks planning to purchase than planning to promote, which might be an indication of issues constructing. There’s no indications it’s going to be a growth, however the report does present some stability.”
