You might think that a week of unprecedented chaos and confusion in global markets, caused by the naive attempts of amateur statesmen like Scott Bessent and Howard Lutnick to remake the global economy, would have a deleterious effect on the art market. And maybe it will. Our first real clues will emerge next month during the New York sales. Before then, though, we do have some interesting anecdotes from the sales in Paris, where the surprisingly encouraging results suggested that an art market recovery is gaining momentum.

Across seven sales at Sotheby’s and Christie’s—including a single-owner auction at each house—€88.5 million, or about $100 million, was spent, with 58 percent of the volume selling through Christie’s and 42 percent through Sotheby’s. These market share numbers still favor Christie’s, but the market share gap is much narrower than what we saw in London and Hong Kong. Whether Sotheby’s can continue to close the gap in New York remains to be seen, but I am sure there will be a lot of eyes on that issue.