The art trade has a knotty relationship with investment funds. Although the $57.5bn art industry has arguably been built on the premise that art is a good investment, the bare-faced profit pledges of funds make traditionalists squirm.
Art funds famously boomed in the early 2000s, when the rise of the contemporary art market seemed inexorable. When that boom went dramatically bust after the 2008 financial crisis, funds largely fizzled out.
Today, the art market is in the doldrums again. Which makes it the ideal time to launch a new art fund, says Philip Hoffman, the chief executive of the Fine Art Group, which he founded in 2001 as the Fine Art Fund. Between 2001 and 2021, Hoffman oversaw nine art investment funds, running for five- to ten-year terms and on average achieving a 15% compound annualised return on its blue-chip funds, he says. “I proved the point that art could be a good…
