The decision leaves Dr Clare McAndrew’s Art Basel report as the sole market-wide survey.
McAndrew, who had penned the TEFAF report since 2008, left in 2016 to compile a similar report for Art Basel, called The Art Market.
TEFAF then hired Maastricht University professor Rachel Pownall to produce its report that was published in March last year. Pownall’s methodology differed from McAndrew’s, revealing contrasting results: Pownall revised the art market’s 2015 value to $44bn from McAndrew’s $63.8bn.
For 2016 it estimated the total was $45bn, while McAndrew had it at $56.6bn.
A TEFAF spokeswoman said: “After reviewing our art market report strategy in 2017 we reached the conclusion that… we would better serve our dealer population and the wider art community by producing very in-depth and highly focused reports that concentrate on a variety of subjects in the art market.”
According to a report in the Financial Times, TEFAF said its next report will be penned by Anders Petterson, founder of ArtTactic, covering art finance.
Pownall, with colleagues at at the Business School (UMIO) of Maastricht University, is preparing a 2018 art market report with a new partner to be released later this year.
