The contraction of galleries and antique dealers continues, auctions resist

A slow and inexorable erosion of art dealers is sweeping the country. In ten years, Italy has lost 14.05% of its operators, including galleries (-18.54%) - the most penalised - and antique dealers (-10.35%). The only intermediaries that have withstood the various crises, including the Covid crisis that paradoxically relaunched them with online auctions, are the auction houses that have held up (+0.56%) compared to 2013. This scenario emerges from data provided exclusively to Arteconomy by the Milan Monza Brianza Lodi Chamber of Commerce, which censuses in 2023 a total of 3,363 companies active in the art and collectables sector (according to the three Ateco codes 477831, 47792 and 47794). The loss of ground is also registered when looking at the closest figure in 2022. This time it is the auction houses that record the worst result: -2.18%. Although the number of active companies has contracted in ten years, the number of employees in 2023 remained stable at 5,904 (+0.18 on 2013 and - 1.58% on 2022). In detail, the strength of auction houses emerges once again, which have seen their workforce grow by almost 73% in ten years, thanks to the proliferation of departments and new segments of the collectables market that have attracted new experts. On the other hand, dealers - modern and contemporary art gallery owners and antique dealers - have respectively reduced their workforce by 12% and just over 9% because working in the Italian market is increasingly complex due to regulations and taxation.

The map of art shopping centres has not changed substantially in recent years: Lombardy with Milan is the main region followed by Tuscany, Latium, Campania and Piedmont. With the exception of Lombardy, which on the whole has held up, all the other regions have seen the number of active businesses fall by more than 10% in ten years. In particular, the cities in which the number of shopkeepers has contracted by double digits are Rome, Florence and Genoa. Only Venice gains a positive sign, thanks to the Biennale? For years, the art market has chosen as its privileged centres the cities that host important museum institutions and private collections where the most virtuous relationships can be forged. The South, on the other hand, with the exception of Sicily which recorded a contraction of only 7.54%, is losing double figures in its commercial offer, despite the fact that many new galleries are choosing less crowded and expensive places to put down roots.

Looking at the legal status of businesses, it seems that they are growing in size (we do not have turnover figures from the Milan Chamber of Commerce), given that in ten years capitalised companies have risen from 732 to 948 (+29.5%), at the same time as the number of partnerships has fallen from 608 to 444 (-27%) and the crowded family of sole traders has fallen to 1,940 (-23.7%). In recent years, the Chamber of Commerce has also been monitoring female, youth and foreign enterprises. What emerges? Little has changed in two years: in 2023 about 30% of businesses are female, about 5% are promoted by young entrepreneurs and 223 are foreign (about 6% of the active market, up by 3.24%), with galleries (104) and antique dealers (115) more dynamic. The auction segment is firmly in the hands of Italian companies, with the exception of the three majors with their branches, but only Christie's and Sotheby's also hold auctions in Italy.

The Italian market is now at a crossroads: remain in Europe by implementing a reduced VAT on art exchanges, as France and recently Germany did first. Or automatically exclude itself from trade if the legislator does not intervene in time, by the end of the year, to change taxation. The enabling act no. 111 of 2023 for tax reform has delegated the government, in the field of value added tax, to reduce the rate of VAT on the import of works of art, transposing Council Directive (EU) 2022/542 of 5 April 2022 and extending the reduced rate also to the supply of works of art, antiques or collectors' items. The art system operators, expressed in the Apollo group, continue to support this reform and are in favour of switching from the ordinary 22 per cent VAT on trade to the reduced one, which could be 5 per cent.

Now also Assonime with the Position papers "Proposals for a more competitive taxation of art" argues: 'the purpose of the delegation rule is to facilitate the VAT regime of imports and sales of art objects, antiques or collections in order to stimulate the related market and make our system more competitive'. On the taxation of income, he calls for 'giving certainty to the art market - currently lacking defined rules and exposed to the uncertainty of the different interpretations of the financial administration and jurisprudence - and to introduce a specific regulation to exclude from taxation both the capital gains realised by the 'pure' collector and the capital gains deriving from works received by inheritance or donation or from exchange operations or reinvestment of proceeds in another work; cases, the latter, in which there should be no objective speculative intent'.