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May is a ritual in the New York art world. Fairs rise in every corner of the city—from Hudson Yards to Gowanus to the Estonian House on East 34th Street—while galleries scramble to mount ambitious shows and collectors double-book dinners between Tribeca and the Upper East Side. The auction houses follow close behind with their schedule of marquee evening sales. By Memorial Day, the art world has rendered its verdict on the current market, with only Art Basel standing in the way of summer breaks in the Hamptons or Mallorca.

While in years past, the New York fairs have been spread out across early and mid-May, this year everything is packed into one overstuffed week that kicks off Wednesday with the VIP preview of Frieze. And, with the market in the throes of a full recalibration after two years of softening sales and the Trump tariffs casting doubt on hopes of recovery, the stakes are higher than ever.

Last month, after Art Basel and UBS dropped their annual Global Art Market report, I dubbed the current moment the “Great Bifurcation.” While the report found that global sales fell 12 percent last year to $57.5 billion, the second year in a row that recorded a substantive contraction, it also found that transaction volume had risen by three percent, suggesting not collapse, but fragmentation. The top end of the market has slowed—sales above $10 million dropped 39 percent and now account for just 18 percent of the market’s value. Meanwhile, works under $50,000 have gained market share.

“There’s no doubt we are in a difficult moment,” art advisor Candace Worth told ARTnews earlier this week. “There’s so much unpredictability. The general sentiment among the art-buying public seems to be that they don’t want to spend above a certain price point until they feel a little more confident about what’s going on, globally, financially, politically.”

Worth noted that the market environment is influenced also by what came before it—as in, the boom in buying that accompanied the years just before and after the pandemic. The unstable economy is a factor, but there is also a buying “hangover.”

“People bought so much art at such a steady clip over the last five to seven years,” she said “Now they are looking at, in some cases, dropping values, rising storage costs. And they start to ask themselves, ‘What am I doing with all this? Do my kids want this art? Am I donating it?'”

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