NEW YORK—Every day now, I dutifully trek back and forth between the Eighth Avenue subway and our new offices, neatly tucked into a corner of the sprawling 1931 Starrett-Lehigh Building on 26th Street and the West Side Highway. The brick-and-glass structure, featured in the seminal 1932 MoMA exhibition that gave the International Style its name, covers an entire city block.To break up the monotony of the long crosstown journey—interminable on blustery winter days—I’ll often take a zigzagging route. Of course, I’ve traversed these streets a thousand times on my visits to the contemporary galleries that have populated the area in recent years. But it’s funny how a daily commute can crystallize your perception of a place.

It does not take a rocket scientist (as the saying goes) to deduce that Chelsea is a neighborhood in transition. But what I’ve come to appreciate with a clarity perhaps shared only by urban planners and geologists is the comforting inevitability of a changing landscape.

Will the art world epicenter shift to the Bowery, leaving Chelsea in a SoHo state of mind? Will the High Line, the most anticipated new urban park since the days of Olmsted, bring a burst of vitality to the neighborhood? Will the ongoing condo-ization of gallery spaces and the onslaught of luxury residential projects designed by a panoply of international starchitects forever alter the playing field, from both an aesthetic and an economic perspective? Divining the answers to these somewhat conflicting questions no longer troubles me, for I’ve come to realize that tectonic shifts, whatever their nature or ramifications, are as inexorable as one’s daily commute.

Bearing this in mind can serve one well when pondering the future of the art market. Everyone’s still asking whether the flagging economy has finally begun to affect our world. Adding fuel to the flames, London-based ArtTactic reported in January that confidence in the contemporary-art market had decreased by 40 percent between May and November of 2007, largely because of uncertainties on Wall Street and beyond. One dealer I spoke with declared that the tide definitively turned sometime between last year’s two Basels.

Nonetheless, great works by great names are still commanding record prices, as are flashy works by trendy names. And if the speculators and party animals drop out of the game, the newly globalized market shows every sign of picking up the slack—not for naught have we devoted 21 pages of this month’s feature well to the burgeoning bloc of Russian buyers (our coverage starts on page 108).

And then there are the stalwarts, the dealers and collectors who have weathered—indeed, have flourished during—many a storm. They’re not abandoning ship. When asked about the effects a recession would have on his collection of early 20th-century Russian works, Boris Stavrovski, the subject of this month’s Obsessions column (page 82), answered, “I’m not going to sell it, so why should I worry?” He’s also not going to stop buying. Like all true obsessives—the backbone of the art community—he just can’t help himself.

Regardless, it’s certain that the market going forward will look different from what we’ve witnessed during these many years of unprecedented growth. What will that new view be? I’ll give it some deep thought when next I’m walking to the office and check back in with you soon. 

"March 2008 From the Editor" originally appeared in the March 2008 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's March 2008 Table of Contents.