Thanks to Artsy Art Market Editor Arun Kakar for including my comments in the May edition of the Artsy Insider newsletter, released today. Here’s my contribution:

Artsy: For this month’s mailbag, we spoke to the independent art advisor David Shapiro. Based in New York, Shapiro is also a certified fine art appraiser and specializes in post-war and contemporary art.

How would you characterize the sentiment at this year’s New York Art Week?

DS: While I hesitate to characterize the sentiments of others, some may agree with my observations, which include the following: At Frieze, some galleries appeared to devote less to this fair than to others.

The compression of New York’s fair schedule into a single week highlighted a palpable difference in quality between Frieze and TEFAF, the latter being superior. As to the question of the extent to which larger economic factors may (or may not) be affecting commerce, one rarely knows the true volume of trade and actual extended prices in a retail sales venue.

As such, the more reliable market gauge, as usual, will be the auctions, after which sentiment will be rooted more firmly in fact.