The Intelligent Edge - Helen Brown Group

July 14, 2022 By Helen Brown

Highlights from the Art Market Report

If you do any kind of research on art collectors, this week’s article by Kristina Gropper is a real treat. Kristina is our resident expert on art markets, art collecting and collectors, and today Kristina walks us through the Art Basel & UBS Art Market Report and shares her insights on what stands out to her as noteworthy. Enjoy! ~Helen

Kristina Gropper

In mid-March, the spring daffodils blossom in my front yard. They are a welcome reminder that longer, sun-soaked days are approaching. Around the same time, I await the arrival of the newest Art Basel & UBS Art Market Report prepared by Dr. Clare McAndrew. Full of insight, charts, and jaw-dropping examples of post-war/contemporary art, it has become a ritual to flip through the annual report online and listen to the accompanying podcast episode from The Week In Art.

The annual art market report presents data collected and reviewed by Dr. Clare McAndrew, a cultural economist specializing in the arts, antiques, and collectibles markets. In 2005 Dr. McAndrew founded Arts Economics, a research and consulting firm focused on the arts economy. Since 2016, the firm has published annual reports sharing trends in the global art market for Art Basel and UBS.

While other reports like the Knight Frank Wealth Report touch briefly on luxury spending, Dr. McAndrew’s comprehensive reports focus solely on the global art market. The Art Newspaper describes the reports as the gold standard in decoding the art market, and I have come to consider them paramount as well.

In addition to annual reports, Dr. McAndrew has recently conducted potent mid-year surveys. The 2020 mid-year survey was particularly perceptive in understanding the ramifications of COVID-19 on art employment, online art sales, and auction sales. In my blog post from November 2020, I shared some takeaways from this mid-year survey and other contemporary reports. Now that two and a half years have passed, let’s revisit this topic and explore highlights from the most recent report.

The Art Market 2022 – An Art Basel & UBS Report

This year’s survey covered 2021 and interviewed 2,339 high net worth (HNW) collectors. The HNW survey data has grown to include ten markets, including Brazil for the first time. The median expenditure on fine art, decorative art, and antiques blossomed from $72,000 in 2019 to $274,000 in 2021.
In 2021, the global art market showed its resilience. After dropping to $50.3 billion in 2020, the art market recovered to $65.1 billion, which surpassed where it was in 2019 ($64.4 billion).
The three hubs remained the US, UK, and China. The United States retained its top position (43%), and Greater China is now in second place at 20%. The UK market dropped to 17%. Small shifts in these hubs may be due to the increased survey size (as noted above, Brazil was added) and the strength of alternative art markets in Europe. Art sales in France, for example, increased in value by 50% in 2021 to $4.7 billion. Sales in Germany, Spain, and Italy also saw growth.
Online sales accounted for 20% of sales in the global art market, which was a 5% drop from the previous year, but still double 2019 levels (9%).
The aggregate dealer sector was resilient and bounced back to around 2019 levels. Within this sector, the art fair calendar returned in 2021, and fair sales increase to 29% of total dealer sales, but nowhere near where it was in 2019 (43%). In 2021, local and regionally focused art fairs, especially fairs in or close to major art markets or cities with dense populations of HNW collectors, have done well given the reluctance of collectors to travel.
Looking at auction sales, private sales increased by 32% to an estimated $4 billion. Total sales conducted by auctions, including public and private sales, were estimated to reach $30.4 billion in 2021, a 10% increase over 2019 levels.
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) were not included in the $65.1 billion total value of global art sales from 2021. The rationale behind this is most art NFTs were sold outside of galleries, dealers, and auction houses. Even so, the report shared that sales of art and collectibles NFTs increased from $30 million in 2020 to $11.1 billion in 2021. According to the report, 75% of art NFTs were resales and owned for just over a month before being resold. An astonishing 74% of HNW collectors purchased an art-based NFT in 2021. A majority (88%) of HNW collectors expressed interest in purchasing art NFTs in the future, but time will tell if this trend holds.

Do you concentrate on art collectors and art markets? What stood out to you from this report?

June 23, 2022 By Helen Brown

Tips for acing that research job interview

Whether you’ve just graduated or have been in the fundraising intelligence field for 15 years, if you’re looking for a new job the interview process can be a little nervous-making.

That said it’s always good to remember to relax as much as you can during the interview.

Interviewers want you to succeed. They’re trying to fill a position with the right person and they’re really hoping that you’re going to be “The One” so they can stop searching and get back to work. You’re going into a situation with someone who is pre-inclined to root for you, so take a few deep breaths before you start so you can be your most calm, confident self.

One important thing to consider as you’re taking your deep breaths is that both you and your potential future employer have a lot at stake here. If you consider both points of view, you’ll probably have more success.

What do I mean?

Consider what they’re looking for as well as what you are. You’ve probably already made a list either on paper or in your head about things that you are looking for in a new job and a new employer. (If you haven’t actually written them down, I’d recommend doing it before you start the interview process. That way you’ll be able to check off early on whether the organization you’re interviewing with meets your must-have and nice-to-have lists).

You’re not the only one with a checklist, though, so it’s always good to ask the interviewer what they’re looking for in a successful candidate. Not only will that make the process more clear, but you’ll have a better idea if you need to mention skills they’re looking for that may not be apparent on your resume, or that haven’t been covered in the questions they’ve asked.

You may even want to take an inventory of your skills before the interview to be prepared. At some point, a question will hopefully come up that allows you to talk about what you would bring that would complement the talent pool already in place. Be prepared to tell concise stories illustrating one or two of these job-related strengths, and talk about them with genuine joy and pride.

What else is important?

Well, if you’re applying for a research position, they’re probably going to want to see evidence that you’re good at it. Here at HBG, we ask a question early on in the interview to see if the candidate has done any research at all into our company. That tells us a couple of things: they’re an inveterate researcher, and they want to work here, not just somewhere else other than where they are.

But if they don’t ask, try to find opportunities to show the interviewer that you’ve done your homework on their organization and use it as a springboard for questions (For example: “I saw that your nonprofit just announced a brand-new campaign. What did your department do to help prepare for it?”) It not only speaks to your relevant skills, it also sends a message that you’re a strategic thinker and being purposeful about your career path.

Your questions are important

At the end of the interview you should always ask anything you might want to know about the position itself that has not come up. If there are specific things you’re interested in (Is this actually a fully remote position? Are flexible hours possible? How much travel is required? Who would be my supervisor? What is the growth trajectory for this position? Do you provide support for continuing education?) now is the time to ask them.

But also be prepared to ask some questions about the organization as well, including features of the department or organization. Here are a few examples of what I mean:

What is this Research shop/fundraising division particularly strong at?
What are the goals for this department for the coming year?
How much interaction is there between front-line fundraisers and this department?
I noticed you have a book club/kickball squad/pub quiz team. How did those get started and how do new employees join up?
What would you consider the biggest challenges for the department in the next 6-12 months?

Changing jobs is a life-changing decision, and a candidate who doesn’t ask any questions comes across as someone who is not a very curious person – not great in a researcher – or that they’re not really all that interested in the job. If you’re someone who is simply shy in the moment, then have a list of questions ready to go.

Post Interview

I’ve seen arguments on both sides for and against sending a thank you email/note to the interviewer(s). My colleagues and I are on Team Pro – we appreciate it and do notice when someone sends a thank you email/note after the interview.

If you really want the job, sending a note can’t hurt. You don’t need to go over your resume or your unique skills that make you the best candidate; just say thanks and be yourself. If you are genuinely still excited (or even more excited) about the position post-interview, now would be a great time to say that.

Even if you decide that you don’t want the job after all, send a thank-you email anyway. You can be honest and stop the process with positivity and relay pleasure in having made a new connection. That kind of professionalism means that, even if you’re not a good fit for that job, the people you met may still think you’re a good candidate generally and refer you to a colleague with an open position you do fit.

Interviewing is always stressful, but hopefully these tips will help make the process more transparent and beneficial for you and for the people wishing you well on the other side of the table.

June 16, 2022 By Helen Brown

Summer shorts

What would we do without people who make our lives easier? Those kinds of people are especially valued now when they share tools and other things that help us get our work done, pull on a pair of shorts, and get outside to enjoy the nice weather.

Tara Calishain is one of those generous people in the search/research world. Tara’s brand new widgets Back That Ask Up and The Anti-Bullseye Name Search are two good examples of research tools that can make your life easier. If you don’t know Tara’s brilliant website/newsletter/resource-a-thon ResearchBuzz, then I urge you to click over there immediately. I’ll wait (but fair warning, you could be a while. Lots of good stuff there).

Every so often Tara noodles around and creates a new RB Gizmo, and I thought I’d tell you a little bit about these two recent ones.

Back That Ask Up (BTAU) allows you to do a Google search within a specific time period before now. So, let’s say you know someone sold their business before 2016 but you don’t know exactly when. Or you want to get a sense of the company’s reputation or public opinion around the time of a major crisis. You just plug in your search string, tell it to eliminate everything in the last x number of years, and there you go. Can you do straight-up date searches in Google using their advanced menus? Sure – but this is a lot less fiddly.

The Anti-Bullseye Name Search (TABNS) is a particularly good extra step for us prospect researchers. Since we always want to query every permutation of a person’s name to get as many hits as possible, I’m guessing that you’re like me and you do a major string like this one:

(“joseph smith” OR “joseph j smith” OR “joe smith” OR “joe j smith” OR “jospeh smith”)

But who remembers to use “smith joseph”?? I can honestly say that I forget to add that more times than I remember. And if your Joe Smith has any kind of literary citation (whether they’ve written or been written about) or were a plaintiff or defendant in a court case, or appeared in a SEC document, or were the owner of a painting sold in a Sotheby’s auction, etc. you’re going to miss them with a straight “Firstname Lastname” search. What’s better, if the person is famous (or – ugh – has the same name as a famous person), in TABNS you can even add keywords to eliminate things you don’t want.

Cool, eh? Here’s another cool thing:

You know that hyperventilating feeling you get when you’re working in your browser and you accidentally close a really good tab (or 15?). Or maybe it’s just me who has 20 (ahem) tabs going at any one time. Anyway, to find that lost tab again I usually end up delving into my history or typing what I remember of the URL to see if it automagically comes up. Then I learned about a better way:

Ctrl (or Command) + Shift + T

It opens the tab you just accidentally closed!

Hit that combo again and again to re-open the 5 or 10 or 15 you just accidentally closed to renew them all! What. A. Revelation! No more hyperventilating! (well, about that anyway)

One More

Okay, here’s the last short tip I’ve got for today: getting rid of hyperlinks in Excel before they happen.

You may have heard that we’ve been working on a very large ongoing project that involves entering information into a database about donor advised funds for searchers to use as a resource. A lot of that information gets entered first into Excel to be quality tested, and every record includes at least one URL.

Every. Single. Time. we add a row, we have to make sure that the URLs aren’t live, and tabbing to that cell and hitting Ctrl-K, Remove Link, Enter gets to be a pain after 500 or so records. I know, you can get rid of a bunch of live links at once, but I want to take care of them before they get there in the first place – and there’s a way to do that! You can pre-create Excel sheets without pesky live links (or live email addresses!) to accidentally click on, and you’ll never have to Ctrl-K, Remove Link, Enter ever again.

In your Excel sheet, go to:

File, Options, Proofing, AutoCorrect Options.

That weird bunch of words at the top of the mini-menu is actually three hard-to-discern tabs. Click on the AutoFormat As You Type tab and de-select Replace as you type: Internet and network paths with hyperlinks. Hit Okay twice and there you go – no more hyperlinks!

I hope these short cuts for summer help get you outside quicker – or at least make your time inside more productive. Enjoy the especially wonderful weekend ahead.

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