Eduardo Holgado encounters most of his art on Instagram now, perusing posts from galleries and artists before ever setting foot in a fair. But when it comes time to buy, the collector, who is in his early 30s, still needs to experience the work in person. It’s Thursday, September 4, day one of the Armory Show, and Holgado is sipping a sparkling beverage as he walks jauntily down the gallery corridors with his art advisor, Clara Andrade Pereira, who encouraged him to experience the work he admired on social media in person. This hybrid approach of digital discovery paired with in-person verification has become the new normal for many art collectors since the COVID-19 pandemic. Susan Vecsey, 54, literally keeps art at arm’s length — but not for the reasons you might think. Walking through the cavernous fair at the Javits Center, the artist-collector positions herself exactly one arm’s distance from paintings, the locus of her collection, replicating where she imagines the artist stood while creating the work. Across this year’s Armory Show, gallery directors are learning how to navigate this tension between digital discovery and physical experience, which is subtly reshaping how artists, collectors, and gallerists interact with one another. Sean Kelly, whose gallery has participated in the fair for decades, acknowledged that collectors “do come having done homework online, but info online is a partial picture.” The challenge, he told Hyperallergic, is “reaching out of the computer and phone and moving people to feel there is some kind of reality.” This shift toward more deliberate engagement is reflected in purchasing patterns: “Anything over $1 million is extremely slow,” Kelly observed. “Anything under $200k, people are much more comfortable making decisions.”Allison Janae Hamilton’s “Love is like the sea…” (2023), bronze (photo Petala Ironcloud/Hyperallergic)International dynamics further complicate the landscape. Sébastien Janssen of Sorry We’re Closed, discussing the impact on global tensions under the Trump administration, notes the effects on cross-border payments for East Asian clients.“Many Chinese collectors disappeared because it’s more difficult to send money outside the country, but they are still there and will come back,” Janssen said. His Brussels-based gallery has adapted by strengthening relationships with American collectors, whom he described as “faster and happy to buy” compared to Europeans. Despite the challenges, Janssen maintains a philosophical approach to sales: “Every sale is a miracle,” he noted, explaining that he sold works to European and Hong Kong collectors before the fair opened, including one piece he says went for $290,000.This pattern seems to hold across regions. At the booth of Buenos Aires-based Praxis gallery, Director Carolina Constantino opined that Argentinian collectors “are more like Europeans — slower and deliberate,” while “Americans are quick” in their decision-making. To accommodate changing collector needs, galleries are experimenting with new approaches: Praxis offers installment payment plans and brings works directly to collectors’ homes to stage them in situ. Cierra Britton told Hyperallergic that her nomadic New York gallery model allows collectors to experience curated presentations, with buyers willing to travel significant distances for pop-up shows.Armory Show attendees look at a Kennedy Yanko sculpture. (photo Valentina Di Liscia/Hyperallergic)Beyond pricing and payment strategies, many collectors want to see themselves reflected in the work they buy. Britton, whose itinerant gallery focuses on artists who are women of color, said that many of her buyers are collectors of color. “I am not a response to BLM,” she said. “I was born Black.” She explained that while people initially bought work “in solidarity with social justice” in 2022 when she opened, her approach sustains collector interest by showing diverse work by Black artists. Britton observes that “Black figurative work is often treated as a trend” in contrast to abstract work by Black artists — a double standard that reduces complex artistic practices to identity markers. Garth Greenan’s consistent focus on work by Native artists over the past five years, including Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, James Luna, and Fritz Scholder, continues, displaying Cannupa Hanska Luger and Mario Martinez at the epicenter of their booth. Like Britton’s curation, Greenan’s similarly educates non-Native collectors about individual tribal identities rather than treating Native art as monolithic. This focus on representation extends internationally: PRAXIS gallery’s Constantino observed that Latin American collectors show increased interest in fairs in the United States when they see Latine artists represented.But not all collectors are increasing their activity. Wall Street financier Stephanie Champagne, who has collected for 10 years, said she has ‘‘stopped buying” altogether for the time being due to market oversaturation. “Too many things,” she explained, though when she does consider purchases, she focuses on artists with “potential to appreciate” — an explicitly economic approach. Other collectors collect with precision: Vecsey “made fewer purchases” since 2020, becoming more selective and buying two to four paintings per year ‘impulsively’ when something truly moves her. Self-described “reformed artist” and collector Karen Lawler, 48, explained that since having her daughter, she “buys less” and has changed what she collects. She finds herself avoiding nudes and fragile glass sculptures that “look like toys” she’s “afraid to break.” Like other collectors in her demographic, she considers herself “too old to discover on Instagram,” preferring to find works in person. However, her budget has grown substantially, from a $5,000 range when she started in 2010 to $40,000 now. All three collectors reflect different expressions of market adaptation among experienced buyers — oversaturation fatigue, increased selectivity, and life stage considerations.Some collectors say their art-fair purchases are declining due to market “oversaturation.” (photo Valentina Di Liscia/Hyperallergic)While established collectors pull back, newer collectors seem to be entering the market with different appetites for risk. Holgado began collecting five years ago with the pragmatic objective of interior design, purely consuming art via the internet and social media research. Now, with the avid support from his advisor, he frequents more galleries and art fairs, including visits to the Armory Show, in addition to relying on Instagram to learn about new artists. This personal guidance has expanded both his curiosity and his budget, which has expanded from the $1,000-to-$5,000 range to $30,000, while his focus has shifted from decorative purposes to a more in-depth engagement with art. Gallerist Nicelle Beauchene noted that the market is now “heavier with art advisors,” reflecting newer collectors’ increasing reliance on professional guidance to navigate the digital and experiential spheres of the art market.The trend toward personalized guidance has created space for hybrid models, like roaming galleries that operate with greater flexibility than traditional brick-and-mortar spaces. Britton and Stephanie Baptist of Medium Tings both exemplify this mélanged approach as part advisors, part gallerists. Both build relationships based on what Britton called “initial organic connection” and offer services traditional galleries often can’t, from home consultations to highly curated pop-up experiences, ephemeral displays of her artists’ works. Britton explained that the pop-up model leverages “the psychological value of scarcity,” making buyers more eager to collect when they finally get limited access to an artist and their work in person. Storm Ascher of the nomadic Superposition Gallery echoes the value of this approach and the motivation it creates, expressing relief at selling a major work on day one of the Armory Show — a particularly crucial feat for galleries with limited in-person exposure to the public.Visitors at the Armory Show’s 2025 edition (photo Valentina Di Liscia/Hyperallergic)This year, another significant factor shaping collectors’ decisions is the political stance of galleries and artists. Beauchene reported that collectors now ask about artists’ political positions, explaining that one collector in the past year agreed to purchase a work but later reneged upon discovering the artist’s support for Palestine. It’s an extension of broader professional backlash against artists who have expressed solidarity with Gaza over the last two years.The increasingly visible intersection of politics and collecting, which have historically been intertwined, raises urgent questions of representation and artistic agency in an ecosystem that often requires financial support from donors and collectors. At the Santa Fe Indian Market earlier this month — the second-largest art market in the US, approaching the scale of Armory and Art Basel due to surging interest in Native art — artists like Tyrrell Tapaha and Rachel Martin told Hyperallergic that they’re both prioritizing institutional relationships over gallery partnerships. During a panel with Cara Romero and Kent Monkman, Nicholas Galanin told the audience that “capitalism will eat you alive” if artists don’t prioritize community connections and quality of life over purely commercial considerations. Tapaha and Martin, who have shown at galleries like James Fuentes and Hannah Traore, respectively, increasingly prefer direct museum sales that align with their values.These behavioral shifts — from Instagram discovery to political litmus testing and institutional preferences — signal a fundamental market realignment. As established collectors become more selective and newer ones rely increasingly on advisors, many galleries are adopting flexible models that prioritize relationships over transactions. Five years post-pandemic, the art world’s digital transformation has evolved into something more complex: a reconfiguration of power dynamics determining who collects, what drives their decisions, and how artists choose to engage commercially.