2009 Trends in Art Collecting

"Diamonds are a girls best friend"

Sneak Peek 2009
The Big Trends in Art Collecting in the new year...Flight to quality.

The Bold Prediction, Diamonds are forever. Even while the economic downturn batters luxury jewelry retailers like Bulgari and Cartier, top-quality diamonds, especially colored stones, will continue to demand stratospheric prices. The old laws of supply and demand rule when it comes to one-of-a-kind mega-sparklers.

Connoisseurship will reign, most notably in the highest-priced markets like impressionist and modern, and postwar and contemporary art. Bottom feeders will suck up some lesser works, but auction houses will see many lots failing to elicit a single bid. Though the economy will continue to put a damper on sales in 2009, records will be set for rare and exquisite works. Precursor: At Sotheby's November impressionist and modern evening sale, Kazmir Malevich's 1916 abstract, "Suprematist Composition," fetched $60 million (including the auction house premium), a record for the artist, in a sale that made $223.8 million, $113 million less than the low estimate.

The Unconventional Wisdom. Prices for work by African-American artists will continue to climb, despite the awful economy. Long under-valued, African-American art is breaking out of its under-appreciated niche. Mainstream museums like the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Cleveland Museum of Art are buying more work by black Americans. While the stock market was crashing in October, Swann Auction Galleries set a record for abstract painter Norman Lewis, when the MFA paid $312 million (including the auction house commission) for an untitled work from the early 1960s.

The Misplaced Assumption. Contemporary Chinese art is dead. Sales for Chinese contemporary work performed horribly in fall 2008 after soaring for the previous four years. But the price drops were a needed correction, spawned by the economic crisis. At auction, Chinese contemporary prices have tumbled 30% to 40% from their peak. Only 18 of 32 lots found buyers at Christie's Nov. 30 auction of contemporary Asian art in Hong Kong. However, the crazy run-up in prices and sudden popularity of contemporary Chinese art have brought some notable names to the fore. Work by artists like Zhang Xiaogang and Zeng Fanzhi will continue to be valued by collectors.

The Watch List. Sol LeWitt. Death and museum shows are the perfect combination when it comes to goosing value. Watch for price hikes for work by conceptual artist LeWitt, who died in 2007. The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams, Mass., just opened a LeWitt retrospective that will stay up for the next 25 years, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York is staging an exhibit of LeWitt's wall drawings through June 29. While inflated contemporary art prices are sure to get battered by the tanking economy, LeWitt's pieces, which range from minimalist, geometric drawings to room-sized structures, are probably a sound investment at this point.

Susan Adams On Collecting Forbes.com 12.17.08, 6:00 PM ET