Much of the several trillion dollars printed at the behest of the U.S. Federal Reserve chairman — and trillions more in other currencies printed by his peers at central banks around the world — has made its way into stock and bond markets over the past few years. But some of that money has also helped to prop up the art market, specialists in the field say, as demand for certain categories reported by auction houses demonstrates: sales of Old Masters, postwar and contemporary, Impressionist, modern and Chinese works at Christie’s and Sotheby’s rose 5.9 percent last year, to $6.64 billion.
“What’s driving the art market globally is that certain people have a lot of liquidity and are looking for places to put it,” said Suzanne Gyorgy, head of Citi Art Advisory, a service of Citigroup’s private bank. “For many people art is
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/30/arts/artsspecial/As-Money-Props-Up-Art-World-Prospects-Are-Mixed.html?pagewanted=all