Zilkens' News Blog

Zilkens’ News Blog 46 2025

Last week in Germany, everything revolved around Art Cologne. Stefan Kobel reports on this in detail. For us, the focus was on the sponsorship we have been providing for years for young buyers at the Gesellschaft für Moderne Kunst e.V. (Society for Modern Art) and a joint event with Handelsblatt and Weltkunst. Dr. Susanne Schreiber spoke with Stephan Zilkens about the rather complex topic of transparency in the art trade. The VIP lounge was the main meeting place for all insurers involved in art insurance. Hardly anyone was missing. However, there were so many brokers around that one can assume that nothing anti-competitive was discussed there. Perhaps there will soon be a challenge cup, disguised as a travelling exhibition, which will be passed from insurer to insurer early in the year so that one can discern from its hieroglyphics what the market really needs. In any case, the insurers hardly seemed to have time to look at the gallery stands. Nevertheless, there was frenzied buying, and one gets the impression that the positive signals from Paris have continued in Cologne.

Speaking of Paris: the deputies in the French parliament have decided that a wealth tax should also be levied on art collections. It is still unclear whether this will apply to assets worth 1.3 million or 2 million euros. In any case, there is talk of 1%. This is causing considerable alarm in the art trade in France, which is just beginning to recover. Wealth taxes of this kind have already led to wealthy French people feeling much more comfortable outside the country than in a miserly environment. Interestingly, this vote was passed with the support of Le Pen's right-wing conservative party and the Socialists.

Last Wednesday, we opened Jim Harris' exhibition at Villa Minima in Cologne with around 100 guests. The gallery is now open Wednesdays to Fridays from 2 to 7 pm and Saturdays from noon to 5 pm. We are planning two more concerts with a quartet consisting of female saxophonists. Invitations will be sent out separately, but anyone interested is welcome to contact us now.

The next typhoon is rapidly approaching the Philippines, leaving behind enormous destruction. In some regions of the world, insurers are already responding to changing environmental conditions and the increasingly difficult-to-calculate effects of the resulting events. Try insuring an extremely high-value detached house in Sydney. You will find it quite difficult. We must be prepared for the fact that, with the globalisation of environmental phenomena, insurers will also include events that occur far away from our perception in their risk calculations. No wall, no matter how high, will help. These risks are global, and premium rates are calculated accordingly.

We wish everyone a good start to the week, in which there is surely another art fair somewhere in the world that we have probably forgotten to mention.

Stephan Zilkens and the team at Zilkens Fine Art Insurance Broker GmbH, Cologne and Solothurn