Emerging Trends in the Global Art Market
New York, July 19, 2025 – Symora Art, CHINCHINART and A&B Lab, together with THE BLANC, presented Emerging Trends in the Global Art Market: an afternoon of two conversations with voices from the auction room, the gallery and private collecting, on where the art market stands and where it is heading. Organized and hosted by Jinyi Freya Xu of Symora Art, who also coordinated and moderated Panel I.
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PANEL I
Asia Rising: Structural Shifts and Global Positioning in the Asian Art Market
Karen Hayward and Dan Chen
Coordinated and moderated by Jinyi Freya Xu
PANEL II
The Power of a New Generation: Young Collectors and the Redefinition of Cultural Capital
Kailin Li, Aishan Zhang and Elena Platonova, moderated by Yitian Xu
DATE & VENUE
Saturday, July 19, 2025, 2–5 PM
The Blanc Gallery, 15 E 40th St, 12F, New York
PRESENTED BY
Symora Art, CHINCHINART, A&B Lab and THE BLANC
ORGANIZER & HOST
Jinyi Freya Xu, Symora Art
ORGANIZED WITH
Luman Jiang, Yitian Xu and Shuhan Zhang
In the Room
Speakers
Five perspectives from across the market — the auction room, the gallery, advisory and private collecting — on how value, taste and access are shifting between Asia and New York.
Karen Hayward
Adjunct Professor, NYU Visual Arts Administration · Art Consultant · Former Specialist, Chinese Works of Art, Christie's
Independent art consultant, educator and appraiser with more than 30 years in the global art market, including long-term roles at Christie's as a specialist and catalogue contributor in Asian art and decorative arts.
“Buy for cultural value, not for speculation — start small, and follow the artist.”
Aishan Zhang
Cataloguer, Private Sales, Phillips
Specializes in 20th- and 21st-century art. Previously in curatorial roles at Tang Contemporary Art; MA, Columbia University. Member of the Guggenheim Young Collectors Council and Asia Society's Young Council.
“A quality work will sell at a reasonable price in any market.”
Dan Chen
Director, Alisan Fine Arts New York
Leads the first overseas branch of Hong Kong's Alisan Fine Arts, founded more than four decades ago. Previously director of Chambers Fine Art; has curated exhibitions for Wang Dongling and Pixy Liao and managed projects for Ai Weiwei.
“Asia is no longer chasing the Western canon — it is collecting its own.”
Elena Platonova
Founder, PLATO Gallery
Founder of a New York gallery representing contemporary artists from Asia, the diaspora and beyond, including painters who bring AI into their process.
“We fall in love with a work the way we fall for a person — we feel it first, then we explain it.”
Kailin Li
Founder, Artvest
Works closely with Asian and Chinese collectors, with a focus on the next generation of clients and the great transfer of wealth now under way.
“The wealth transfer is here; the real work is educating the next generation of collectors.”
Insights
Highlights from the two conversations, edited from the panel recordings.
Karen Hayward
Adjunct Professor, NYU Visual Arts Administration · Former Specialist, Chinese Works of Art, Christie's
Panel I
The recent correction is structural as much as cyclical. A generational shift in taste is changing what sells, as it did when the grand Reynolds and Gainsborough portraits fell from record prices to little interest.
Headline prices rarely tell the whole story. Look into a work's sale history: a trophy painting can resell for less than it fetched a decade earlier.
Young careers are better nurtured in the primary market. The secondary market can be ruthless, and an early auction spike that later collapses can damage a fragile career.
Dan Chen
Director, Alisan Fine Arts New York
Panel I
Institutions move first. Museums acquire young artists earlier than the collecting public, and once a work enters a museum collection, collectors take notice and follow.
A career takes years of work and patience. He encourages the artists he works with to stay away from auction for as long as possible.
Art fairs drive sales through critical mass rather than prestige. With a booth costing several months' rent, galleries have to choose their fairs carefully.
Kailin Li
Founder, Artvest
Panel II
Younger clients arrive with more information, often with research from AI tools in hand. That makes education smoother, though their mindset is different.
Many younger collectors would rather pay an auction premium for the work they want than play allocation games around in-demand artists.
Fairs are judged by their destination too: attendance at Basel felt lighter this year, as many younger collectors saved the trip for Paris.
Aishan Zhang
Cataloguer, Private Sales, Phillips
Panel II
Online bidding is now the norm. At a recent Phillips sale, fewer than five bidders were in the room, and the sale still performed well.
The trade still makes buying harder than it should be. Sales tax, shipping and paper-only contracts need the ease collectors expect from any other purchase.
In a slow market, the challenge is sourcing: owners who do not need to sell hold back their best works.
Elena Platonova
Founder, PLATO Gallery
Panel II
Many of the painters she represents use AI in their process. Once collectors learn how, they look again and engage far more deeply.
Newcomers after the speculative post-pandemic years arrive with a healthier attitude. “Younger” collectors are less a matter of age than of fresh eyes.
Artists with roots in Asia who were educated in the West bring culture, literature and philosophy into dialogue with their training — a rich field to learn from and to collect.