Is the Great Wealth Transfer Already Reshaping the Art Market?

There is plenty of buzz around the Great Wealth Transfer, and even more money: $18.3 trillion is expected to change hands globally by 2030, rising to $124 trillion by 2048, much of it passing to millennials and Gen Zers. 

But as far as the art market is concerned, the transfer is not purely monetary; it also ventures into the thornier matter of taste. The question, then, is not whether the Great Wealth Transfer will happen; but whether it is already shaping how younger generations approach and collect art.

For an early answer, New York appears the obvious place to look. According to The New York Art Market Report, copublished by New York-based art fair Independent and the art-storage company Crozier Fine Arts, the city accounts for as much as 90 percent of US art sales by value; it is also the world’s busiest art hub. 

Every fall, two fairs mark the market’s return from its summer lull and the beginning of its busy autumn season: Independent 20th Century, which spotlights overlooked and under-recognised twentieth-century artists, and The Armory Show, which offers a platform for emerging artists and galleries. Together, these fairs allow a glimpse of younger collecting habits beyond auction results. They also highlight two niches attracting growing interest from these generations: overlooked historical artists and emerging artists and galleries.

Ortuzar at Independent 20th Century 2026. Courtesy: Ortuzar.

Younger collectors, as we know by now, approach the market differently from their predecessors. According to Art Basel and UBS’s 2025 survey of high-net-worth collectors, millennials and Gen Z collect across a wider range of media than their older counterparts. While boomers remain most active in paintings, Gen Z leads in digital, film and video art; millennials are most active in prints, photography and works on paper. Gen Z respondents also allocated an average of 26 percent of their wealth to art, compared with 20 percent across all those surveyed, while 56 percent expected to increase their attendance at art events.

But the differences hardly stop there. Art adviser Khrystyna Dzenzhenska suggests that younger clients also bring “an element of social justice” to their purchases, seeking out previously overlooked female, Indigenous, Black and Latinx artists rather than simply focusing on the blue-chip names collected by their parents. 

“They are excited by what’s new, not something their grandparents discovered 50 years ago,” she says. In her view, this becomes particularly evident at fairs, where they turn to emerging artists – or historical figures with whom they identify – in search of a sleeper: an artist still trading at around $15,000, but with the potential to command considerably more once the market catches on.

Their search for sleepers also coincides with the segment of the art market that has seen some of the strongest growth in recent years. In 2025, for example, works below $50,000 accounted for 61 percent of lots sold at New York’s three major auction houses, up from an average of 48 percent before the pandemic. 

Joel Sternfeld, New York City (#1), 1976, dye transfer print, 8.5 x 12.5 in. Courtesy of Rodder.

This growing demand for more accessible price points is also visible at fairs, including Independent and The Armory Show. This September, the former offered 155 works – nearly 22 percent of all works on offer – below $20,000, with $10,000 to $20,000 its single largest price bracket. At Armory, meanwhile, 54 percent of reported first-day sales fell between $10,000 and $100,000, with another 36 percent below $10,000. Crucially, these are also the price points where younger collectors – the generations poised to benefit most from the Great Wealth Transfer – tend to be most active, raising the possibility that its effects are already beginning to register at the two fairs.

Another reason is the younger generation’s appetite for discovery, according to Dzenzhenska. Independent, in particular, is built on the premise of rediscovery: many of its booths spotlight overlooked twentieth-century artists, with 68 percent dedicating their entire presentation to a single artist. Charles Moffett, for instance, presented textile artist Silvia Heyden, giving collectors the opportunity to encounter her work in depth before wider institutional and market recognition takes hold – precisely the kind of sleeper Dzenzhenska says younger buyers are seeking. 

The same principle guides three of the fair’s solo presentations. Ortuzar is showing Mary Grigoriadis, a New York painter whose densely ornamental canvases sit close to Pattern and Decoration. Rodder has Joel Sternfeld, whose large-format colour photographs of the American roadside are brought together in American Prospects (1987). While, Nara Roesler brings Amelia Toledo (1926-2017), the Brazilian sculptor who gave up constructive geometry during the 1970s for shells, stones and other landscape matter. At Independent, Luisa Toledo, the sculptor's granddaughter and a representative of her estate, suggests that this approach has been instrumental in presenting her grandmother’s work with the attention it deserves, while attracting younger collectors at price points that make discovering and collecting her work more accessible. For Independent founder Elizabeth Dee, that is precisely the point: the fair’s combination of focused presentations and expanded pricing “lowers the threshold for participation”, giving “newer collectors a rare opportunity to study pricing logic firsthand”.

At The Armory Show, the same hunger for hidden treasure takes a more contemporary form. The fair’s Presents section, dedicated to galleries no more than 12 years old, reached its largest iteration yet this year – an expansion Armory director Kyla McMillan places within a broader commitment to “choice and access”. Young collectors, she says, bring “new energy” to the fair, while its mix of twentieth-century material, emerging artists and first-time galleries create multiple points of entry for collectors at different stages. This appetite translates into purchases: Perrotin sold six works by Kathia St. Hilaire for $5,000 to $45,000, while Kates-Ferri Projects sold out its presentation of Studio Lenca, with paintings priced between $10,000 and $40,000.

Amelia Toledo, Reunião [Meeting], 1976, plaster molding 5 panels of 5.9 x 39.4 in, photography by Flavio Freire. Courtesy of Nara Roesler.

So, is the Great Wealth Transfer already reshaping the art market? Perhaps – but not simply by replacing one generation’s tastes and collecting behaviours with another’s. Nearly 90 percent of Gen Z collectors surveyed by Art Basel and UBS who had inherited art kept it, and Dzenzhenska sees many of those younger clients “mix and match” inherited blue-chip works with their own discoveries. 

What Independent and Armory suggest is that, as younger generations inherit more wealth and their purchasing power grows, their preferences also gain market power, creating new demand for emerging artists, overlooked histories and more accessible price points without necessarily displacing the old guard. It’s not only a transfer of money at play, but by the changing collecting behaviours, tastes and demands that come with it.