ArtDayMe : Hossein Hashempoor [Director of the ArtDayME and Iran Art media group]:

It is said that out of fear of taxation, galleries have long been concealing their sales.

During a visit to an exhibition, you may be given a price list on paper, which is usually not for public distribution. But more importantly, for quite some time now, most galleries no longer announce which artworks have been sold and at what prices.

At first glance, this might seem like a clever way to avoid taxes,

but the ongoing nature of this practice has caused significant damage to the art market—damage that has primarily affected the galleries themselves and, even more severely, the artists’ sales market.

Now, when galleries host exhibitions for artists, there is no media documentation that allows art collectors or buyers to track those artists’ previous sales.

It is unclear how the prices for a given artist have evolved over time, and this uncertainty has made speculative buying and potential investment in their works questionable at best.

This shortcoming becomes even more evident when an artist wishes to exhibit outside their home country. In the absence of documented media coverage, the artist’s past sales are unavailable. Consequently, their prices displayed on gallery walls cannot be verified. Foreign buyers typically remain unconvinced, do not trust the pricing, and ultimately, no sales occur.

These untraceable transactions are referred to as “blind sales,” which may help gallery owners and artists get by in the short term—but they will certainly be damaging in the medium and long term. Especially considering that, in many countries, artists are exempt from taxes.

I have written many times before: the world has become very small, and artists need purposeful content production more than ever in order to be seen. “ The Middle East's Artists and Art Need Content Creation the Most"[March 18, 2024]

It seems the issue of galleries concealing sales information has now become a serious missing link in the art market.

This is while both of these elements (price transparency and content production) are the foundation of the “NeoMasters” project, which I discussed earlier in the article “ Neo-Masters: Crowning of Rising Stars According to Hossein Hashempoor" [February 3, 2025].