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The Culture Crash
by Sara Clemence
Dec 26 2008
Dec 26 2008
Alongside stocks and real estate, the global market in culture has gone from boom to bust.
After setting records and shattering expectations, the British art star finds demand is dipping. Read More
Dramatic declines in the stock and real estate markets have been sucking up most of our attention over the past several months. But as the Dow has dived 35 percent, the world’s cultural markets have also tumbled.
Before we started thinking of it as a recession, people were already buying fewer books and less music—U.S. album sales fell 9.5 percent in 2007. In an economic crisis they have cut back even more, and all across the spectrum. Pop music, theater, fine art, and books are all being pummeled. Shares of concert promoter Live Nation are hanging around all-time lows. Some art mavens thought their world would be immune to a downturn, but after several years of setting records with individual sale prices and overall results, Sotheby’s lost $28.2 million on its prestigious fall contemporary art auctions. More than a dozen Broadway shows are shutting down.
We haven’t seen the full fallout yet. Funding for cultural institutions, for example, which has already dropped as major donors have pulled back or been wiped out, will likely be decimated. Still, some think there might be a silver lining in all this—a return to more thoughtful work, an end to buying frenzies and fantastical pricing.
Portfolio.com has tracked the business of culture since we launched in April 2007; this year, many of our stories traced the arc of a bust.
Theater
In the spring of 2007, Condé Nast Portfolio wrote about a growing group of investment funds that were pooling cash to put into Broadway shows, hoping for high returns.
In September 2008, some Broadway bigwigs were nervous. Productions were being canceled. In the weeks that followed, several high-profile shows, including Grease and Hairspray, were closing down.
Books
In late 2007, publishers were backing away from boom-time real estate books on flipping and financing. In December of 2008, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt said it would put all new acquisitions on hold, and Penguin and HarperCollins instituted wage freezes.
Art
When we covered the 2007 fall art sales in New York, the auction results were still strong. Though there were signs of wavering, Sotheby’s managed to sell a Francis Bacon painting for $45.6 million, and a Paul Gauguin for more than $39 million. Art Basel was still booming.
In March, we reported that Andy Augenblick, president of Fine Art Capital, one of the nation’s most active lenders against art, was calling a crash. While in August, banks such as UBS said that despite the losses they were taking, they wouldn’t curtail their support of art events, the landscape looks very different a few months later. And the fall auctions, more than the writing was still on the wall. Even Damien Hirst, the mogul favorite, is seeing demand dip. Yet another sign of an era at an end.
Before we started thinking of it as a recession, people were already buying fewer books and less music—U.S. album sales fell 9.5 percent in 2007. In an economic crisis they have cut back even more, and all across the spectrum. Pop music, theater, fine art, and books are all being pummeled. Shares of concert promoter Live Nation are hanging around all-time lows. Some art mavens thought their world would be immune to a downturn, but after several years of setting records with individual sale prices and overall results, Sotheby’s lost $28.2 million on its prestigious fall contemporary art auctions. More than a dozen Broadway shows are shutting down.
We haven’t seen the full fallout yet. Funding for cultural institutions, for example, which has already dropped as major donors have pulled back or been wiped out, will likely be decimated. Still, some think there might be a silver lining in all this—a return to more thoughtful work, an end to buying frenzies and fantastical pricing.
Portfolio.com has tracked the business of culture since we launched in April 2007; this year, many of our stories traced the arc of a bust.
Theater
In the spring of 2007, Condé Nast Portfolio wrote about a growing group of investment funds that were pooling cash to put into Broadway shows, hoping for high returns.
In September 2008, some Broadway bigwigs were nervous. Productions were being canceled. In the weeks that followed, several high-profile shows, including Grease and Hairspray, were closing down.
Books
In late 2007, publishers were backing away from boom-time real estate books on flipping and financing. In December of 2008, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt said it would put all new acquisitions on hold, and Penguin and HarperCollins instituted wage freezes.
Art
When we covered the 2007 fall art sales in New York, the auction results were still strong. Though there were signs of wavering, Sotheby’s managed to sell a Francis Bacon painting for $45.6 million, and a Paul Gauguin for more than $39 million. Art Basel was still booming.
In March, we reported that Andy Augenblick, president of Fine Art Capital, one of the nation’s most active lenders against art, was calling a crash. While in August, banks such as UBS said that despite the losses they were taking, they wouldn’t curtail their support of art events, the landscape looks very different a few months later. And the fall auctions, more than the writing was still on the wall. Even Damien Hirst, the mogul favorite, is seeing demand dip. Yet another sign of an era at an end.
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