The ArtReview Power List 100 in the last 20 years (2005, 2015, 2025)

It's always worthwhile to keep an eye on what's changing in the upper echelons of the art genre/business - what's changing and what's not.  

The turn of the year is a good time to reflect on how things are changing....

ArtReview's Power 100 is an annual ranking of the most powerful people in Art and is always worth a look.  

• The core concept of the list revolves around the mechanisms and impact of influence in the art world.
• A lot of what changes tends to filter down over time - so it's a bit like looking into the future. 

Changes in the ArtReview Power 100:
who was at the top in the last 20 years 
(see FULL TABLE below)

This post looks at 

• who are the Power 100 in 2025 
• how the list has changed RADICALLY in the last 20 years. 

and gives me an opportunity to give my very analytical brain a work out - and to look at the trends over time.

The Power 100 is ArtReview’s annual portrait of power in the artworld. It is an attempt to describe the individuals and groups that have shaped what art has been seen and how it has been seen over the past 12 months (broadly speaking, the calendar year). And yes, that is an indication that ArtReview views the artworld as, essentially, a social structure: a network of relationships that are triggered by the actions of individuals. 

They define this further

The criteria for inclusion are:

• that each person of the Power 100 has had an active influence on the art being made and shown now;
• that influence has to be active

Of course, it really all depends on WHO you ask..... 

The Top 10 in the Power 100 2025

Below is what the top ten in 2025 looks like - and I highlight other key categories of artists in the rest of this post.

this list is not designed to be how ArtReview and its cronies might wish the artworld to be; rather it’s an attempt to depict how it is.

Who's who and who gets selected is chosen by a secret global panel of c.30 people who are spread around the globe.

how do you measure influence and inspiration?
ArtReview’s way is to invite a panel of around 30 individuals, some of whom might well have been on the list themselves in another year, from across the globe and from all parts of the artworld to suggest the names of those people who have shaped the art that has emerged in their locality over the past year.

THE TOP 10
in the Art Review Power 100 List in 2025

I can honestly say I've never heard of any of them - apart from a well known artist and a photographer

• Amy Sherald - the figurative artist with a unique style for black Americans, who has zoomed up after a first appearance last year and 
• Wolfgang Tillmans - the photographer who has not been outside the top 50 since 2012.

There again, I didn't bother going to the RA Summer Show where The Guardian reckoned Kerry James Marshall to be

‘America’s greatest living painter’

Art Review provides

• an article The 2025 Power 100: A User’s Guide which expands on what's going on and is worth a read.
• plus a chance to Explore the 2025 Power 100 list in full

They together provide some useful summaries of what's happening 

Some of you may be surprised to find that only one third are individual artists!

To my mind, by far the most influential segment are those who gather art together to benefit the wealthy i.e. the curators, funders, gallerists, thinkers and museum directors - who together total 52, i.e. over half the 100 

Less than 40 are artists or artist collectives.

Categories of people in the Art Review Power 100

However what is really fascinating is how the top western gallerists have totally dropped from view in the last 20 years. (see my table below). There are in fact NONE in the top 50.

Is this because 

• those being asked for an opinion are not gallerists?
• or those that are are anti-gallerists?
• or the demise of galleries continues and hence the views of gallerists is seen as less important?

Art Review recognised 10 years ago that:

In many traditional art centres, museums are at a stalemate of funding and programming, there is alarm about the closure of so many familiar mid-level galleries and many of the blue-chip megagallerists are reporting dramatic falls in profits of (up to almost 90 percent in some regions according to newspaper reports)

It seems to me they are still trying to find what comes next.....

New Additions

Of the 34 NEW additions to the list:

• 23 are totally new (i.e. never ever been on the list before) and 
• 11 are returning after a break.

To my mind to have a turnover of market offering within a market of some 25% is HIGH. To my mind, the article fails to recognise the potential that turnover has to signal

• lost revenue and poor sustainability,
• affecting growth and profitability.

i.e. the scope for repeat business is slashed; the economies that can be achieved when the same people do well on a repeat basis

To me it just looks like a lot of people looking around all over the place for the "next big thing". That's a very expensive and unprofitable way of operating, given how much investment will be going into people who won't be here next year.

Or as the article indicates

today’s global artworld is in some ways unrecognisable from what it used to be, back in the days when ‘globalisation’ was a relatively new idea

To me it seems the expert panel might know about art - but at the same time lack those who know about the economics of markets and what affects how sustainable they are over time.

Art without an understanding of business could be said to be on a par with an amateur painting in their garden shed...

How the table has changed in the last 20 years

Here's a table of how things have changed in the last 20 years. Note in particular the changes in:

• the number of gallerists
• the nationalities
• the absence of museum directors by 2025

Where are the power 100 located?

Europe and North America now account for less than two thirds of the Power 100 - which would have been unthinkable 10 years ago. 

The list it would seem is going where the money is. The Middle East / Arabic states are the ones which have very much come to the fore in recent years.

One might even characterise it was an exercise in flattery seeking to influence.

Country of origin re those on the list in 2025

Reference to my previous posts

• 2010: The most influential people in art? (2010)

this appears to be an incredibly westernised view of the world - one might even accuse it of being New York centric.

• 2019: NEW Ethical slant on 2019 Power 100 "The most influential people in art"

Campaigners and activists are now very prominent in the list following their efforts to name and shame

• 2023: The Power List 100 | Art Review

The general themes coming through strongly are as follows:

• change is happening
• an adjustment of the places which influence
• art has a purpose with artists as activists
• an increase in the number of artists who are outside the European–North American axis of influence
• establishment figures regain prominence - as the world recovers from the Pandemic - and remain focused on the luxury / high stakes art market
• gallerists on the list tend to be associated with multiple outlets/locations