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Last year the Aotearoa Art Fair reported more than $4 million in combined sales, with some galleries selling out their booths.
The 21st Aotearoa Art Fair, the country’s largest, will open on Thursday at Auckland’s Viaduct Events Centre, with more than 200 artists and equally impressive sales expected.
Behind those numbers is a quieter shift: not just in how much art is being bought in Aotearoa, but in who is buying it and what they’re buying.
Historically, art collecting was associated with men, bar a handful of prominent female patrons.
In an online nationwide survey commissioned in November 2025 by Suite Gallery owner David Alsop, Talbot Mills researchers found that though more men then women have bought art from a gallery, both genders said they were very likely or somewhat likely to buy art in the next year.
And in practice, a rise in women collecting art is being noticed across the art market.
Natasha Conland, senior curator of global contemporary art at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, agrees that the idea of a single type of collector no longer holds.
“In family collections or where couples collect, the women in the mix traditionally stood back from the spotlight,” Conland says. “But this has changed.”
More women, whether collecting independently, in a couple or in art groups, are building collections that reflect their tastes and often their values: supporting female artists, emerging artists, or using collecting as a form of cultural expression.
Sue Waymouth, director of the Aotearoa Art Fair, first began collecting photographers including Ans Westra and Fiona Pardington. Over time, her collection expanded – often towards female artists in other mediums.
In recent years, she has taken that further by co-founding a collecting group, the Fontana Collective, a model that reflects a shift away from solitary collecting towards something more social and shared, a way of engaging with art as a community as well as an investment.
The Fontana Collective, named after the Renaissance painter Lavinia Fontana, who was regarded as the first professional female painter in western Europe, comprises four couples who focus on acquiring works by female artists including Aotearoa artists Kate Newby, Jade Townsend, Imogen Taylor, Anoushka Akel, Raukura Turei, Yona Lee, and Susan Te Kahurangi King.
But female collectors are not a monolith. Pip Greenwood, chair of the a2 Milk Company, began collecting art in her early thirties. “I focus on what I like and would like to live with,” she says.
Her first purchase, a self-portrait by Trevor Moffitt, still holds emotional weight. Moffitt was the art teacher at Burnside high school in Christchurch where she attended school.
An early Judy Millar painting came next. It now hangs next to a more recent work, marking different moments in her life. Millar is one of New Zealand’s most internationally recognised artists, but Greenwood is less driven by the idea of art as an investment.
Aotearoa Art Fair offers a snapshot of these changing dynamics.
Across the market there is also growing support for emerging artists, particularly Māori practitioners. Conland points to this as “the exciting growth area”, noting an increase in collectors focused “almost solely in supporting emerging Māori art and artists”, a trend clearly visible at last year’s fair.
Waymouth says highlights at this year’s fair include the Kurutai Collective, a group of Māori uku (ceramic) artists, some of whom have been practising for over 50 years, showing alongside emerging artists, and newcomer Nadia Marychurch (Ngāi Te Rangi, Ngāti Raukawa), presented by Horizons gallery, whose work sold out at her graduate show at Whitecliffe College of Art and Design.
Collectors are also drawn to solo presentations and long-standing artist-gallery relationships, where rare or less accessible works can surface.
This year, Lett Thomas (formerly Michael Lett) is presenting a solo booth of major new large-scale paintings by Judy Millar. Sydney’s Nasha Gallery will show Mark Maurangi Carol, a Raratongan artist who has had sell-out shows in Australia. Gow Langsford has new paintings by Claudia Kogachi and Grace Wright.
In Aotearoa, collecting has always been shaped by proximity to artists, to communities, to stories. What’s changing now is who is shaping those relationships.
Helen Klisser During bought her first work at 18 – a painting of a Wattie’s can of peas with a paint brush in it by Dick Frizzell, a New Zealand artist known for his pop art paintings and prints featuring Kiwiana. Klisser During has worked for the last 30 years as an art adviser in New York and Aotearoa, and her collection is mostly composed of works that have been gifted to her by the artists she works with.
Her pro tip? “At the Art Fair you have the dealer’s ear,” she says. “If you like a work in a booth, ask them to show you more works. They’ll often have smaller works behind the scenes.”
Klisser During agrees that female-led art collecting groups are on the rise. “Women’s groups have become very strong,” she says. “There isn’t really a barrier to entry. You can buy art on lay buy and pay it off in increments.”
Even so, the art fair is also a place to find affordable works.
Gow Langsford will continue for a second year with a booth with works for under $5000, and Suite Gallery has 50 small paintings by New Zealand-born, Melbourne-based Richard Lewer on offer, with a few priced at $3000. McLeavey gallery will show Nigerian-born, Auckland based Ruth Ige’s paintings that went to the São Paulo Biennale and won the prestigious Rydal Art Prize. Alongside them, they’re offering a new suite of more affordable works on paper.
As Greenwood puts it: “Just start and enjoy the process.”
In a market often defined by price tags and prestige, that may be the most radical shift of all.
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