The Desk
Public Art Indices Mislead Fiduciaries by Omitting Massive Private Sales Volume
Private transactions and opaque auction guarantees hide the actual clearing prices of high-value art, rendering standard repeat-sales and database benchmarks incomplete for valuation.
Public art market indices fail to provide fiduciaries with a reliable valuation basis because they omit the massive volume of high-value private transactions and guaranteed sales that occur away from the public rostrum. While these indices offer the appearance of scientific precision, they operate under a fundamental selection bias, tracking only a highly visible and self-selected fraction of the global art trade…
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