6. Canvas remains king, while prints and works on paper are increasingly popular

Paintings continue to command the primary position, with over three quarters of those surveyed acquiring a painting in both 2023 and the first half of 2024. Works on paper experienced significant growth, with over half the sample active in this medium in 2023, up from 33% in 2022, while prints showed an uplift to 35%. This shift toward more accessible media formats appears to have enhanced market stability at lower price points.

7. Gen X continues to drive the market, and millennials spend less

With growth of 3% year-on-year, Gen X respondents had the highest average spending in 2023 (USD 578,000), and their lead continued in the first half of 2024, with levels over a third higher than millennials and double that of boomers and Gen Z. While younger HNWIs had some of the biggest increases in average spending overall up to 2022, this was reversed in 2023, and the key driver of the decline was the 50% decrease in spending by millennial respondents to USD 395,000.

8. The majority of HNWIs buy from dealers, and art fair spending increased, while multichannel buying is here to stay

The most used channel for purchasing art was a dealer, with 95% of respondents purchasing through galleries. The importance of a multichannel approach for dealers was evident: in addition to purchasing in person at galleries, 72% of HNWIs had bought through a dealer’s website or OVR without viewing the work in person first, 61% used email or phone, and 43% bought from them on Instagram. In the first half of 2024, 41% had bought at an art fair, up from 39% in the whole of 2023.

The report revealed that HNWIs showed a strong willingness to work with new galleries, with 88% purchasing from at least one new dealer over the last year and buying from an average of 17 galleries in 2024, up from 13 in 2019. Additionally, 70% of the galleries they purchased from were based within their local region, compared to 50% in 2022.