Gen Z Outspent Older Collectors Two-to-One, Art Basel & UBS Survey Finds

Gen Z collectors spent an average of $347,460 on art in 2025 — more than twice the amount of older generations surveyed — according to the fifth edition of the Art Basel & UBS Survey of Global Collecting, authored by economist Clare McAndrew and based on responses from 3,100 high-net-worth collectors.

The figure marks a 19 percent increase from the previous year, ARTnews reports, and the trend has continued into 2026 across almost every segment of collectibles. The result defies widespread fears that younger collectors are less active than their older counterparts.

Yet the same generation guards its privacy. Some 39 percent of Gen Z respondents said they would rather keep access to their collections private — nearly twice as many as other generations.

What else surprised the survey?

Artificial intelligence has moved from the margins to the toolkit. Collectors of all ages increasingly rely on AI for advice, recommendations, and provenance checks, with usage jumping from four percent in 2024 to 22 percent this year.

What is happening at Tang Contemporary?

Several artists are accusing Tang Contemporary gallery of not paying them and withholding artworks, The Art Newspaper reports, joining similar claims made by the gallery's landlord and other providers.

The gallery's space in Hong Kong's Wong Chuck Hang neighborhood announced in late August that it shuttered on July 21. A legal notice was attached to the closed gallery's door in August. The gallery's other locations — in Bangkok, Beijing, Seoul, Singapore, and central Hong Kong — remain open.

Gallery director Vivian Har denied that any artists had filed lawsuits against the gallery. But a lawyer representing an anonymous artist said in a statement that a legal complaint was filed on August 14 in Thailand, alleging the gallery owes their client about $450,000. Several other artists told The Art Newspaper they are owed money. The landlord of the closed Hong Kong space is demanding about $201,000 in unpaid rent for this year, plus other fees, and had reportedly previously filed a legal complaint.

In brief

• Danish artist Jens Galschiot's nearly 8-foot-tall naked gold statue "Orange Plague," depicting a bloated President Donald Trump sitting on the shoulders of a smaller man, has been temporarily installed in Strasbourg's European Parliament building. (The Straits Times)
• Five people were arrested in connection with the September 8 theft of two paintings by Auguste Renoir from a museum in southern France. (Le Figaro)
• Berlin's Volksbühne theater covered the genitalia on a giant rooftop sculpture of a nude female figure by Florentina Holzinger, inspired by Gustave Courbet's "The Origin of the World," after threats of criminal charges. (Berliner Zeitung)
• Ukraine is rebuilding a Russian-bombed museum dedicated to Roman Shukhevych, accused of being a Nazi collaborator. (The Art Newspaper)
• The Para Site nonprofit art space is leaving its Quarry Bay location in Hong Kong after a decade and will launch a nomadic program. (Artforum)

Can AI fix the gender gap on gallery rosters?

A new AI tool measures the gender balance — or imbalance — of gallery artist rosters in a matter of clicks, Ocula reports. Designed by art historian Hall W Rockefeller, who also founded the arts network Less Than Half, the tool determines what percentage of a gallery's roster is female or identifies as non-binary. Galleries that pass a 50 percent quota receive a digital sticker they can display.

"I want people to notice the very apparent discrepancies and inequalities between men and women artists and the systematic ways in which women artists are kept from succeeding," Rockefeller said. She hopes the app will encourage more recognition and support for women artists while boosting "a global movement of matronage" — the mobilization of more women art collectors. As AI use among collectors more than quintuples in two years, tools like this one suggest the technology's next arena may be the market's own accountability.