The art market defied growing economic gloom to return 11 per cent to investors last year, outpacing stock market returns for a second consecutive year.
The performance of the Mei Moses All Art index, a leading barometer of art returns based mainly on paintings sold in New York and London, beat the total return of S&P 500 index of US equities by about 9 percentage points. The outperformance, the largest since 2008, was driven by strong growth in Chinese demand and high prices for the work of popular artists such as Andy Warhol.
The Mei Moses index has beaten the S&P 500 in six of the past 10 years, with an average annual return of 7.8 per cent compared with 2.7 per cent for the benchmark US equity index. The index tracks the prices at which works of art sell over time using repeat sales data, in a methodology similar to the S&P Case-Shiller property index.