On Art: The Filipino Art Market: A Market Still Finding Its Eye

A Market of Three Kinds of Buyers

The Filipino art-buying market, at least from where I sit, can be roughly divided into three broad groups: those who primarily buy art as decoration, those who approach it as speculation, and a smaller group who might genuinely be called collectors.

Of course, these categories aren't absolute. Someone may initially buy a painting because it looks good on a wall and eventually develop a deeper appreciation for the artist. A collector may also care about the investment value of a work. But the distinction is useful because it says something about where our market is today, and perhaps where it still needs to go.

More Artists, More Galleries, More Art

There is certainly no shortage of activity.

There are more artists entering the scene, more galleries opening, and more exhibitions taking place across the country. Beyond the physical art world, social media has created an enormous parallel universe of emerging painters, illustrators, digital artists, multidisciplinary practitioners and other creative voices.

The sheer volume of work being produced today is remarkable.

And this isn't just a Philippine phenomenon. The global art market itself has continued to evolve, with art fairs becoming increasingly important as places where galleries find new buyers. In 2025, art fairs accounted for 35% of dealer turnover globally, their highest share since 2022. Almost half of the buyers that dealers sold to were new to those businesses.

So there is clearly an appetite for art.

The more interesting question is: what kind of art are we actually learning to value?

What the Art Fair Revealed

The recent art fair we attended offered a particularly interesting glimpse into this market. Our members were exposed, in a relatively concentrated setting, to a cross-section of the country's more affluent art-buying public.

What struck me was not the lack of interest in art, but the way that interest was being translated into purchasing decisions.

A significant portion of buyers still seemed more comfortable with large, immediately attractive decorative works, even when the prices appeared difficult to justify, than with conceptual or formally distinctive works that demanded a little more engagement.

That observation stayed with me.

When Decoration Wins Over Art

What makes this especially difficult to understand is the price differential.

You could encounter a large decorative work selling for ₱150,000 beside a conceptually stronger, more distinctive work exploring a similar subject—say, flora—priced at ₱40,000.

Obviously, price is never a scientific measure of artistic quality. Art isn't a commodity where value can be calculated simply by comparing size, materials and subject matter. Provenance, reputation, demand, scarcity and the artist's career all matter.

But when the gap becomes that wide, it does make you wonder what exactly the buyer is paying for.

The question isn't whether decorative art has value. It does. Beauty, craftsmanship and visual appeal are legitimate reasons to buy art.

The question is whether our market sometimes rewards immediate visual gratification far more readily than it rewards originality, experimentation and artistic voice.

And that is a much more uncomfortable question.

A Market Still Learning How to Look

Perhaps this is where the uncomfortable reality lies: our art market is growing faster than our culture of looking.

There is plenty of buying, but buying isn't necessarily the same thing as collecting. There is plenty of exposure, but exposure doesn't automatically translate into deeper appreciation.

The Philippines has an increasingly active ecosystem of fairs, galleries, and exhibitions, yet the market is still learning how to distinguish between something that simply works on a wall and something that has a meaningful artistic voice.

This isn't uniquely Filipino, either.

The international art market has its own versions of the same tension. Even as the global market recovered in 2025, the recovery was uneven, and established artists continued to benefit disproportionately from risk-averse buying. At the same time, the market has been seeing new buyers enter through fairs, galleries, social media and direct relationships with artists.

That last part is important.

A market doesn't mature simply because more money enters it. It matures when buyers become more discerning about where they put that money.

The Problem With Playing It Safe

This is perhaps why established collectors tend to gravitate toward safer ground.

The names of the masters come with an established history, institutional validation and a relatively legible market. Their reputations have already been tested by time.

Then there are the more speculative buyers—the newly wealthy, the investors and those looking for the next artist whose prices might rise dramatically.

Their motivations are understandable, too. Art is an asset class for some people, and there is nothing inherently wrong with considering its investment potential.

But somewhere between these two ends, the emerging artist can get lost.

The artist who is still developing a language, experimenting with form, taking risks and trying to say something meaningful about the society around them often doesn't come with the reassurance that the market wants.

They are asking the buyer to believe in something that hasn't yet been proven.

That is a much harder proposition to sell.

When the Market Gets Noisy

The situation becomes even more complicated when the market gets crowded.

There are young artists producing easily digestible, low-brow work, and affluent weekend hobbyists who can enter the scene with considerable purchasing power but without necessarily having developed a serious engagement with art.

But perhaps it is unfair to simply complain about their presence.

They are part of the ecosystem too.

A decorative buyer can eventually become a collector. A speculative buyer can eventually become genuinely interested in an artist's practice. A casual visitor can encounter one work that changes the way they see art altogether.

In fact, the global market offers some encouragement here. The 2026 Art Basel and UBS report found that 66% of high-net-worth collectors bought works by artists they had newly discovered in 2025, up significantly from 2022. The same report also found that direct buying from artists has become much more important.

That suggests that collectors aren't necessarily destined to remain loyal only to established names.

People can learn to look differently.

The Long Wait for Recognition

Still, it may take years—and perhaps a substantial increase in purchasing power—before we develop a collecting culture broad enough to consistently reward artists for originality, experimentation and a distinct artistic voice rather than simply for decorative appeal or speculative potential.

There is a danger in waiting too long.

The artists who are pushing boundaries today may not necessarily be the artists who are most celebrated today. Some may only receive the recognition they deserve after years of struggle, or even after they are gone.

That is one of the cruel realities of artistic life: society is often better at recognizing significance in retrospect than it is at supporting it while it is still being made.

And this is where being a Filipino artist today can feel like a sacrificial existence.

You make the work. You take the risks. You endure the uncertainty. You hope that eventually somebody will understand what you were trying to do.

And sometimes, the market only catches up much later.

Perhaps There Is Still Hope

But perhaps resignation isn't the only way to look at it.

The Philippine art scene is undeniably more active than it was before. There are more artists, more galleries, more fairs, more platforms and more ways for people to encounter art than ever before.

The challenge now is not simply to create more art.

It is to create better eyes for art.

A healthier market isn't necessarily one where everything becomes expensive. It is one where buyers become curious enough to ask why a work matters, who made it, what the artist is trying to say, where that artist might be going, and whether the work deserves a place in our cultural memory—not merely on our living-room wall.

That kind of collecting culture cannot be manufactured overnight.

It has to be learned.

It has to be encouraged by galleries, artists, critics, institutions and, most of all, by audiences willing to look beyond what is immediately familiar.

Perhaps that is where the hope lies.

The market may not yet know how to recognize every important artist.

But the artists are here.

The work is being made.

And there are more people looking than ever before.

Maybe, given enough time, some of those people will eventually learn to see.