2024 Favorites and 2025 Predictions
Favorite Shows of 2024
Christina Ramberg: A Retrospective which I saw both at its host institution the Art Institute of Chicago and at the Hammer Museum in LA in December. Its final stop is the Philadelphia Museum of Art Feb 8 -June 1, 2025, so for all my East Coasters, you still have a chance to see it this year.
Keith Haring: Art is for Everyone seen at the Walker but curated by the Broad and seriously half owned by Masterworks, this exhibition showed how much Haring infused art into every aspect of his life to really prove art is for everyone. Shout out to Sotheby’s installation of his subway drawings in November as well.
Paul Pfeiffer: Prologue to the Story of the Birth of Freedom curated by LACMA - I learned so much about an artist and practice I knew so little about, a true testament to having a survey show, as the impact of his work is much greater when viewed together.
Honorable Mention: All women all the time in the Bay Area rn: Mary Cassat at the Legion, Tamara Lempicka at the de Young (did not feature the strongest examples), Making their Mark show at BAMPFA and Amy Sherald at SFMOMA with SECA winner Rupy C Tut.
2025 Art World Predictions
I like to start out the year with a few predictions, mostly for the opportunity to hold myself accountable at the end of the year and reflect on how things panned out.
1. The gap between the primary market and secondary market will become smaller. It is currently relatively substantial as people sit on their hands while they wait to see if the auction prices will improve in 2025.
2. A strong artist-run online marketplace will emerge that will finally solve this problem: “How do I buy art from emerging artists at accessible prices?
3. I truly hope that somebody figures out how to run a successful art fund, but I mostly hope that people interested in art as an asset class just start buying art for their own collections-a great art collection is illiquid and time consuming but will ultimately have the best returns-plus you get to live with it.