Deeply reported features from the Masterworks Research Team, published weekly.
Banksy built a career attacking the art market, then became one of its most valuable assets. We unpack the paradox, the prices, and what it means for investors.
How the Big Three auction houses earn revenue from buyer premiums, seller commissions, guarantees, private sales, and financial services, with 2025 results.
How fine art and venture capital compare on return shape, volatility, correlation, illiquidity, and Sharpe ratio, with 2024-2025 data for HNW portfolio construction.
How fine art and Bitcoin compare as stores of value, with 2025-2026 data on volatility, drawdowns, Sharpe ratios, and correlation to equities.
Art prices are a call option on the wealth of the top 0.01%. As that wealth concentrates, a fixed supply of trophy works reprices upward.
The global art lending market sits near $40 billion in 2026, growing 8 to 12% a year. Who lends, at what terms, and why the market keeps expanding.
Wealthy collectors now allocate 20% of their wealth to art, up from 15% a year earlier. How multi-family offices handle that allocation in 2025 and 2026.
How new wealth drove the Chinese and Russian art booms, why both overshot and corrected, and what the cycle teaches investors about emerging-market art demand.
Art freeports store an estimated $100B+ in art tax-free. How they work, who uses them, and what investors need to know about the risks.
The 2017 tax law killed 1031 like-kind exchanges for art. Here's what collectors lost, how the 28% collectibles tax works, and which deferral strategies still exist.
Appraisal-based art valuations lag the real market and smooth out volatility, the same way private real estate and PE marks do. Here is why that matters for measuring risk.
FinCEN has not finalized a fine art AML rule, and US and EU KYC rules already make laundering money through art very hard. What investors should know in 2026.