Building a Lasting Art Collection in 2025: Navigating the Contemporary Market - Jonathan Ludlow (CEO)

The question of what it means to build a lasting art collection has always been more cultural than financial. Collectors throughout history, from the Medici to Peggy Guggenheim, have been judged less by the scale of what they owned than by the coherence and vision of their choices. A great collection is not simply an accumulation of objects but a narrative, one that reflects the time in which it was built and shapes how that time is remembered.

Damian Hirst - Diazine Dicarbozylic Acid, 2022

In 2025, that principle is more relevant than ever. After the volatility of the past few years, the global art market has recalibrated. The headline numbers tell part of the story: global sales reached approximately $65 billion in 2023, a contraction from the post-pandemic high, with 2024 showing further softening at the very top end. At the same time, the middle of the market, works by significant but not stratospherically priced artists, has shown resilience, and the online share of dealer sales has continued to climb steadily, holding at over 20 percent. These shifts underscore a simple truth: speed, speculation, and spectacle are less durable than discernment. Collectors today must navigate with patience, clarity, and a sense of legacy.

Collecting as Legacy

Every era produces its own archetype of the collector. The Medici used art to cement political and dynastic authority; Isabella Stewart Gardner shaped a transatlantic cultural identity through her eclectic acquisitions; Peggy Guggenheim’s collection, still on view in Venice, is both a testament to her personal taste and a defining record of mid-century modernism. In Britain, Charles Saatchi demonstrated the power of focused collecting, bringing the Young British Artists from obscurity to international recognition in the 1990s.

What unites these figures is not just wealth but vision. They collected with an eye to the long term, privileging coherence and conviction over convenience. Their collections endure not because they anticipated every market trend but because they articulated a perspective, one that institutions, scholars, and audiences still find compelling.

The same applies now. A lasting collection in 2025 is one that weaves together works in dialogue: established anchors that carry historical or institutional weight alongside contemporary voices that articulate the present. Collecting is authorship; it requires editing as much as acquisition. The most thoughtful collectors I encounter are those who can define their thesis in a sentence, even if it evolves over time. That thesis may be geographical, thematic, or material, but it provides direction, a filter against the endless noise of the market.

Damien Hirst - 'Ducimus' , 2020

The past two years have clarified the strengths and vulnerabilities of the art market. The top end has grown thinner: record-breaking evening sales are now the exception, not the norm, and liquidity for works priced above $10 million has diminished. Meanwhile, works by mid-career and emerging artists with strong institutional support continue to place steadily, particularly when provenance and exhibition history are clear.

Another notable shift is digital. The early pandemic period encouraged even the most traditional collectors to transact online, often for six- and seven-figure works. That habit has endured. In 2023, around 23 percent of dealer sales were conducted online, and by now most serious collectors are comfortable acquiring through digital channels, provided the relationship with the advisor or gallery is established. This hybrid model, where a WhatsApp preview or an emailed PDF leads to a wire transfer, is no longer unusual but a standard part of the ecosystem. Yet digital access has also accelerated hype cycles. Instagram visibility, art-fair buzz, and speculative flipping have created unsustainable trajectories for certain artists. The correction of 2023–24 revealed the limits of this model. Collectors who bought into hype without depth often found themselves with works that lacked enduring demand or curatorial interest. Those who resisted the noise, however, and focused on artists with robust practices and institutional recognition, are better positioned today.

In this environment, discretion is not only tasteful but strategic. The best acquisitions are often made quietly, outside of the glare of art fairs and auctions, in private conversations where trust and alignment matter more than headlines.

Stewardship and Structure

One of the less glamorous but more important developments of the past five years has been the integration of compliance into collecting. In the UK, all art market participants handling transactions above £10,000 are required to register with HMRC and conduct rigorous due diligence on clients. In 2025, the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation extended these duties further, requiring reporting of potential sanctions breaches. Across the Atlantic, the U.S. has brought antiquities under the Bank Secrecy Act and continues to debate broader regulation of the art trade. For collectors, this means more paperwork, but also greater security. Provenance, beneficial ownership, and sanctions checks are not obstacles to collecting; they are safeguards that protect both value and reputation. Any serious collector today should expect, and welcome, detailed documentation, signed contracts, and full compliance protocols.

This speaks to a broader point: collecting is not just about acquiring works, but about stewarding them. Documentation, condition reports, catalogues raisonnés, and thoughtful placement all contribute to a collection’s longevity. Lending to exhibitions, supporting artists beyond the moment of purchase, and avoiding the temptation of rapid resale help ensure that a collection grows in stature rather than diminishes through speculation.

The role of the advisor has evolved in line with this reality. An advisor today must be as comfortable with compliance as with connoisseurship, as adept at interpreting institutional signals as at negotiating discreetly with dealers. At its best, advisory is not a gatekeeping function but a curatorial one: translating between artists, galleries, collectors, and institutions, and helping ensure that acquisitions are meaningful and defensible.

Damien Hirst - Butterflies, 2021

Building for the Next Decade

If the last market cycle prized speed, the next prizes stewardship. The collectors who will be remembered are those who think beyond volatility to legacy, who construct narratives that endure even when the market falters. Already, I see younger collectors adopting this stance: buying fewer works, but better ones; asking the unglamorous questions about documentation and title; considering how their acquisitions will be seen in the context of future exhibitions.

This does not mean that collecting has become purely cautious or conservative. Quite the opposite: the most interesting collections today are those that juxtapose canonical anchors with emerging voices, creating conversations that surprise and challenge. But it does mean that the criteria for inclusion have become more rigorous. Does the work stand up to scrutiny? Does it extend the narrative of the collection? Will it matter in twenty years?

The art world of 2025 is more global, more digital, and more regulated than it was a decade ago. But the core principles of lasting collecting remain the same: vision, coherence, and conviction. To collect is not simply to acquire; it is to take part in the writing of cultural history.

Those who approach collecting with that awareness, who balance discernment with passion, discretion with engagement, will build collections that endure beyond the cycles of the market. The works will outlast the headlines. And in the end, that is the only measure of success that matters.