We trace the long‐term performance of the UK art market across a broad set of crises: world wars, economic recessions, financial crises, inflationary periods, and changes in monetary policy. By means of digitalized historical auction archives, we construct art price indices from the early twentieth century onwards and disclose that annual art auction value grew, in real terms, more than seven‐fold over this period. The arithmetic annual real return and risk amount to 3.6 per cent and 20.1 per cent, respectively. Art returns plummeted at the onset of wars, but turned positive in the second half of wars when they outperformed stocks, suggesting that art was seen as a safe haven in times of political turmoil. During wars, smaller – and thus more transportable – paintings obtained higher returns. Art returns are sensitive to economic and financial crises, with the largest slumps occurring during the Great Depression, oil crisis, recessions of the early 1980s and early 1990s, and the Great Recession. We also document changes in art preferences for paintings’ sizes, schools, liquid art, and artists’ nationalities across crises. Art enters a broad optimal asset portfolio both in non‐crisis periods and during war times.

中文翻译：

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危机时期的艺术

我们追踪英国艺术市场在一系列广泛危机中的长期表现：世界大战、经济衰退、金融危机、通货膨胀时期和货币政策变化。通过数字化的历史拍卖档案，我们构建了二十世纪初以来的艺术品价格指数，并披露了这一时期每年的艺术品拍卖价值实际增长了七倍以上。算术年实际回报率和风险分别为3.6%和20.1%。战争爆发时，艺术回报率直线下降，但在战争后半段，其表现优于股票，艺术回报率转为正数，这表明艺术在政治动荡时期被视为避风港。在战争期间，较小且更便于运输的画作获得了更高的回报。艺术回报对经济和金融危机很敏感，其中最大的衰退发生在大萧条、石油危机、20 世纪 80 年代初和 90 年代初的经济衰退以及大衰退期间。我们还记录了危机期间绘画尺寸、流派、液体艺术和艺术家国籍的艺术偏好变化。无论是在非危机时期还是在战争时期，艺术都进入了广泛的最佳资产组合。