After Donald Trump was elected president in 2016, many personalities from the art world shape the Halt action group and started a movement they called Dear Ivanka. The intention was to obtain Ivanka Trump-who at the time was well known to many galleries as a collector of emerging and established contemporary artists such as Nate Lowman, Dan Colen, David Ostrowski, And Christophe Laine– to act as a moderating force within the Trump administration. There was a letter in Art forum and an Instagram account that collected calls from artists, dealers and collectors to Ivanka, begging her to curb her father’s more authoritarian impulses. There was a protest outside the Puck Building, which is owned by the Kushner family and often displays the couple’s works in the lobby. There were posters repeating Donald Trump’s entire “grab ’em by the pussy” remarks. Richard Prince disowned a work from Ivanka’s collection. It was a big, thriving movement that sprung up immediately.

In the days since Trump was elected to a second term this week, with victory in both the Electoral College and the popular vote, it appears there will be no Dear Ivanka-style protest from the art world this time.

“It’s totally different,” said the curator Alison Gingeras, co-founder of Dear Ivanka. “I think that answer is impossible for a whole host of reasons, and I think one of them is the same reason people have rejected Democrats and Kamala Harris. We’ve become this elite power bloc and people don’t want to hear it. We’re going to talk to each other in an echo chamber.

From the moment it became clear that Trump had returned to power, the art world attempted to understand how his return would affect its sphere of cultural production and sales. It is an event that will once again demonstrate one of the fundamental dichotomies of the art market.

“I think a majority of art buyers would be pro-Trump, and a large majority of art professionals would be pro-Kamala or pro-Democrats,” said Adam Lindemann, the collector and owner of the Venus Over Manhattan gallery on Great Jones Street. “And I met a lot of people who were seriously shocked and depressed because of it.”

There is no doubt that the art collecting class will applaud another round of tax cuts and deregulation. Some were optimistic that changes to the capital gains tax could free up some stocks on the sell side and boost the market, while others pointed out that Trump was the one who made a change to tax policy during his first term, which caused serious damage to the economy. art market.

And dealers could benefit from the fact that collectors would have more money to spend on art, even if they favored a Harris presidency more than a red-hot art market.

There is also a very real possibility that Trump’s promised tariffs on products from China, Currently the world’s third-largest art market, could affect how dealers and collectors approach a fair like West Bund Art & Design, which opened to VIPs in Shanghai on Thursday. Any geopolitical turmoil is not good for an art market that thrives on smooth global trade.

“Obviously people will say, ‘Oh, if there are more tax cuts, then the rich will have money and want to spend more money on art’ – which should not be ruled out compared to… a more progressive tax policy where people would feel like their wallets were a little bit smaller,” said art advisor Jacob King. “But on the other hand, the kind of chaos Trump could unleash is impossible to explain. »

And there are few signs of the resistance that fueled the 2016 protests, or the 2021 impeachment after the Jan. 6 riots. In fact, even before the election, there were signs that the arts establishment might be preparing to work within the system during a second Trump term. No mega-gallery has offered support or held a fundraiser for Harris, although Artists for Kamala has collected donations from heavy hitters and held an event at the Jack Shainman Gallery, which is less than a mega-gallery . In 2016, Gagosian organized a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton in which participated Chelsea Clinton. Jeff Bezos, a serious collector who walked around Art Basel Miami Beach last year with the president of Pace Marc Glimcher, contacted Trump in recent months, directed his Washington Post stop supporting presidential candidates just in time to increase his support for Harris, and quickly felicity Trump on his victory, as he did in 2016.

From LVMH Alexandre Arnault was at the Trump rally in October at Madison Square Garden where a comedian told a bunch of racist jokes days before the election. The collector, who reopened Tiffany & Co. in New York a year ago with an installation filled with Basquiat artwork, Daniel Arsham, Anish Kapoor, And Julien Schnabel, has already had dinner with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. He also attended Biden’s big event at Radio City Music Hall in the spring and a more recent fundraiser for Harris in Manhattan. As a non-citizen, he is prohibited from donating to a candidate. (Arnault could not be reached for comment.)

It made me think back to Art Basel Miami Beach in 2021, when Arnault-owned Louis Vuitton, guest Jared Kushner And Ivanka Trump at the Louis Vuitton fashion show; it was one of their first public appearances since a mob attacked the Capitol a few months earlier.