Basel Miami Sale Totals: The Making of Art Market Myth

Art Basel Miami didn't release any estimates of sale totals for the fair ending Sunday. So figure-happy journalists had to do some improvising.

Among the most enterprising was Bloomberg's Lindsay Pollock, who yesterday informed us that "three top sellers estimated that sales totaled between $200 million and $400 million."

What exactly does this mean? Apparently, three anonymous wheeler-dealers, out of the 200 gallerists with booths at the fair, tallied up their own totals, consulted the gossip grapevine, and came up with separate guesstimates of what the other 197 dealers had done. These three extrapolated totals fell within the $200-400 million range. Not very authoritative, but hey, figures are figures.

Evidently Bloomberg's Basel double-teamer, Linda Yablonsky, found this convincing enough: Following close upon Pollock, she chimed in with her own Miami wrap-up, stating, without qualification, that "sales this year were estimated at $200 million to $400 million."

Unless another reporter steps up soon with more reliable data, these out-of-thin-air figures are destined to be repeated throughout the artworld rumor mill as fact.