Month: October 2025

• Rebekah Bowling, an art advisor at Citi, shared which artists are having a market moment.
• Bowling said that artists blending fine art and craft are particularly popular.
• Citi is one of many banks that have an art advisory unit for their wealthy clients.

If you’re looking for art advice, consider asking your bank.

Rebekah Bowling, an art advisor at Citi, helps ultra-high-net-worth clients in Citi Wealth manage and build their art collections and knows how hard it can be to make sense of the market. Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, and UBS are among the other banks offering art advice to wealthy clients.

Bowling spent a decade at the global auction house Phillips, where she ran the midseason and day sales, before moving to LA and focusing in part on client development. She joined Citi in July.

Her day-to-day can include keeping clients in the know about auctions, suggesting artists who might fit well in their homes or collections, or planning events.

In her mind, it’s not wise for anyone to buy art they don’t actually enjoy — “you will only be disappointed,” — but she knows that many are concerned with finding artists who represent good value.

Start with emerging artists

For anyone who is just getting into collecting, Bowling said focusing on galleries that represent emerging artists is a good place to start. These days, Bowling said, historically underrepresented or overlooked artists are gaining attention.

High-net-worth individuals were increasingly open to buying art from artists they hadn’t known before, according to Art Basel and UBS’s 2025 Survey of Global Collecting. Sixty-six percent bought work from artists they discovered in 2024 or 2025, a rise of 8% from the year prior. Although the art market is experiencing a downturn — global sales value decreased by 12% year-over-year, according to Art Basel and UBS’ 2025 Global Art Market report — some galleries have been bucking the trend. The smallest dealers posted a 17% increase in annual sales, according to the report.

Textile trends

Bowling told Business Insider that institutional support for artists who toe the line between fine art and craft is “very strong, which has led to soaring prices for these artists at auction.” Sculptor Ruth Asawa and textile artist Olga de Amaral are among those gaining traction, she said. In September, one of de Amaral’s pieces sold at an auction for around $1.14 million, almost three times the low-end estimate according to Christie’s.

Asawa isn’t underground — her retrospective recently opened at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan — but Bowling said that Kay Sekimachi is an artist who fits into the same market trend and remains somewhat under the radar. She’s a fiber artist who was friends with Asawa, and her work is currently being shown at a gallery in Manhattan. The prices aren’t listed on the gallery’s site, but a group of three woven bowls recently sold for $3,800 at an auction in California, exceeding the high-end estimate, per Invaluable, a fine art marketplace.

No matter the potential monetary gains, though, Bowling says it’s crucial to be guided by taste.

“From an investing perspective, you really shouldn’t buy anything that you don’t love,” she said.

• Emma Stone has a filmography filled with critical and commercial hits.
• Like any working actor, Stone also has her share of duds.
• Here are the best and worst Emma Stone movies, according to critics.

Emma Stone, 36, is regarded as one of the best actors of her generation. She’s been nominated for four Oscars and won two in the best actress category (“La La Land” in 2017 and “”Poor Things” in 2024).

Her range is seemingly unlimited, tugging at hearts in the rom-com “Crazy, Stupid, Love” (2011), playing tennis legend Billie Jean King in “Battle of the Sexes” (2017), and even getting a taste of the superhero genre starring opposite Andrew Garfield in “The Amazing Spider-Man” (2012) and its sequel.

Stone’s latest movie, “Bugonia,” marks her fourth feature film collaborating with director Yorgos Lanthimos. In it, Stone plays a CEO who is abducted by two conspiracy theorists who believe she is an alien. Like her previous work with Lanthimos, “Bugonia” is being praised by critics and holds an 88% rating on Rotten Tomatoes as of publication.

But Stone hasn’t always been a critical darling. Here’s a breakdown of the best and worst movies in Stone’s career, according to the critic rankings on Rotten Tomatoes.

Emma Stone’s best movies

5. Emma Stone teamed with Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, and Abigail Breslin to battle the undead in 2009’s “Zombieland.”

Critics Score: 89%

This spoof on the zombie genre stars Stone as a survivor of the zombie apocalypse who teams with three others on a cross-country trip to find a sanctuary zone.

3. (tie) Stone played the troubled daughter of Michael Keaton in 2014’s “Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance).”

Critics Score: 91%

In Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s ambitious dark dramedy, Stone plays Sam, a recovering addict and the daughter of actor Riggan (Keaton). The two try to re-establish their broken relationship when Sam works as an assistant on Riggan’s Broadway show.

3. (tie) Stone and Ryan Gosling navigate Hollywood in the 2016 musical “La La Land.”

Critics Score: 91%

An aspiring actress (Stone) and a struggling jazz pianist (Gosling) fall in love while pursuing their dreams in Damien Chazelle’s breathtaking musical. Stone would go on to win her first best actress Oscar for the role.

2. Stone earned another Oscar playing a free spirit in 2023’s “Poor Things.”

Critics Score: 92%

In this outlandish Yorgos Lanthimos tale set in Victorian London, Stone plays Bella Baxter, a woman who died by suicide who is brought back to life thanks to a scientist (Willem Dafoe) who replaces her brain with that of an infant. Bella then takes on life in childlike wonder.

1. Stone and Rachel Weisz battle to be the Queen’s confidante in 2018’s “The Favourite.”

Critics Score: 93%

Marking the first time Stone worked with Lanthimos, this dark comedy set in 1700s England features Stone and Weisz as cousins who engage in absurd antics to outdo each other and become the favorite of Queen Anne (Olivia Colman).

Emma Stone’s worst movies

5. Stone played the femme fatale in the forgettable 2013 crime noir “Gangster Squad.”

Critics Score: 30%

Stone teamed with “Zombieland” director Ruben Fleischer for this gangster movie starring Gosling, Josh Brolin, Nick Nolte, and Sean Penn as infamous real-life mob boss Mickey Cohen. Critics and audiences were less than enthusiastic.

4. Stone probably wants to forget being in 2009’s “Ghosts of Girlfriends Past,” an awful Matthew McConaughey rom-com.

Critics Score: 27%

Early in Stone’s career, she signed on to this romantic comedy headed by McConaughey and Jennifer Garner with a plot based on Charles Dickens’ classic, “A Christmas Carol.” (Yes, you read that correctly.) Needless to say, the movie was hammered by critics.

3. Stone found herself at the center of controversy starring in 2015’s “Aloha.”

Critics Score: 20%

Not only is this movie writer-director Cameron Crowe’s lowest-rated score on Rotten Tomatoes, but Stone was also thrust into a whitewashing controversy for playing a character who is part Chinese, which she is not in real life.

2. Stone voiced one of the characters in the forgettable 2010 comedy “Marmaduke.”

Critics Score: 9%

This big-screen version of the legendary comic strip stars Owen Wilson voicing Marmaduke. Stone voiced Mazie, an energetic Australian Shepherd.

1. Stone is among the all-star cast in the panned 2013 film “Movie 43.”

Critics Score: 5%

Stone joined the likes of Richard Gere, Kate Winslet, Halle Berry, Hugh Jackman, and Elizabeth Banks to star in this anthology comedy made up of 14 short movies. Some critics regard it as one of the worst movies ever made.

• Erin Smith, 47, had lived in New York for most of her life and never planned to leave.
• But when her husband landed a once-in-a-lifetime job opportunity in Quebec, she knew she had to go.
• Smith thought the move wouldn’t suit her, but said she’s much happier than she expected.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Erin Smith, a 47-year-old a freelance marketer and founder of the travel blog Gluten-Free Globetrotter, who moved to Montreal in 2024. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

I was born and raised in New York and spent my last twenty years living in Brooklyn. I just didn’t want to be anywhere else.

Not even in 2016, when I moved with my then-boyfriend, who is now my husband, to Santa Cruz. Even though it was beautiful there, I just wasn’t happy. I had to get back to the city, back to New York. So we moved after only two and a half years in California.

I thought I wouldn’t be moving again, but in 2024, my husband got a really good job opportunity in Montreal. He’s an agronomist who works in indoor agriculture. He had the opportunity to help start up a greenhouse division for a national company there, which was right up his alley.

As you can imagine, there’s not a lot of agriculture in New York City. I’m a freelance marketer and can work from anywhere, but for my husband, it really was the perfect job at the perfect time.

I hired a relocation coach to help me with the move

We had to wait for my son to finish the school year in New York, so from January to July, we focused on planning the move.

The thought of leaving New York was really hard. I mean, all my friends and family are there. And even though Canada isn’t geographically far from New York, it’s still a different environment — especially Quebec, which is a French-speaking province.

I kept thinking back to when we moved to California, which hadn’t been a good fit for us. “Oh God, this is going to happen again,” kept running through my mind. This, plus the overwhelming feeling of how much we’d have to learn about Quebec, led me to hire a relocation coach.

She’s a digital nomad who’s lived all over the world, and she helped me a lot — not so much with the logistics of moving, but more with realizing that the things that were important to me in New York would still be important to me in Canada, and that there are ways to incorporate them into my new life.

We’re paying less for housing in Montreal

We visited Quebec a few times before our move to scout out neighborhoods and schools. It was important for me to visit during the winter because it’s very cold and snowy here, which I wasn’t used to living in New York City.

Our last visit before the move was in April, and we literally had a week to find a place. Unlike in New York, where you can find a rental at any time of year, in Montreal, many leases start on July 1 and run through the end of June the following year.

My husband works in rural Quebec, and we couldn’t live there for many reasons, but we’re very happy with where we landed. We live in a great neighborhood in Westmount, in the southwest part of Montreal. We’re right near a metro station and can walk to downtown Montreal from our apartment. I feel very lucky.

When we moved, our goal was to spend less on rent than we did in New York. In Brooklyn, we lived in a duplex with a backyard, which is pretty rare there — we got really lucky during COVID-19, when everyone was leaving the city. We paid about $3,500 there; here I’m paying roughly $1,000 less. While we’ve lost our outdoor space, we gained a washer and dryer, a luxury I never had in 20 years of living in Brooklyn.

We had to make new friends and set up new bank accounts

Quebec’s primary language is French, so navigating the region’s bureaucracy and school system has been challenging.

In Montreal, there are two main school boards, one English and one French. We needed specific paperwork to qualify for the English system. My son now attends an English school with a French immersion curriculum.

Making friends here hasn’t been easy, either. Because I work for a New York-based company, I’ve really had to put myself out there to meet people. Most of my community has come from meeting other parents through my kid’s school organizations and connecting with our neighbors.

The biggest challenge we’ve faced has been setting up our finances. Since we had no financial history in Canada, we had no credit. Even basic things like getting a credit card or opening a bank account took about six to eight weeks to sort out.

The cost of living here is pretty comparable to New York. We spend about the same on groceries, and while we’re saving on housing, my husband spends more on gas because he’s commuting and driving farther outside the city. I, however, work from home.

The healthcare system is affordable but difficult to navigate

I have been living with celiac disease for over 40 years. In Canada, it has been much easier to eat gluten-free due to the country’s food regulations and labeling laws. And thanks to my work with gluten-free restaurants and brands — and my blog — I already had a built-in gluten-free community when I moved here.

I’ve never lived in a place with socialized healthcare, so there has been a huge learning curve in finding doctors and handling prescriptions. I have to use Google Translate for everything.

Health insurance is affordable here. We no longer pay out of pocket for coverage, which is a big change — in New York, health insurance for a family of three costs almost as much as rent.

It’s different from province to province, but in Quebec, you’re required to have an assigned family doctor. Since moving here, I’ve had to see a few specialists for checkups, and the service has been covered. Sometimes, I still find myself waiting for a bill to show up, and it never does.

Something else that surprised me about the medical system here is that you can actually make an appointment with a pharmacist, and they can prescribe medication if you have proper test results.

Montreal now feels like home

I really love Montreal and I’m happy here. I didn’t expect to like it as much as I do. Life feels calmer — the city is beautiful, cleaner, and safer. People here are so much nicer; they have this polite, laid-back attitude.

Our Canadian visas last for three years, but we hope to extend them. For now, I’d like to stay as long as possible.

A year ago, I probably would’ve wanted to move back to New York. But now, especially with our child in school, I don’t want to disrupt that. I also don’t know if we could afford to go back.

I’ll always see myself as a New Yorker first and an American second; that’s my identity through and through. But in New York, I never really felt like I could slow down. In Montreal, we’re not in that constant, heightened state anymore. Life here just feels different.

• When we had kids, my husband and I decided to make Halloween our biggest holiday celebration.
• It has allowed us to create our own family traditions around a holiday that has fewer expectations.
• My husband passes out hot dogs to the neighborhood. This Halloween, he’s grilling 200 of them.

When you get married, holidays can get tricky.

My husband and I live in Florida, his parents live about four hours away, and mine are in Ohio. When our first holiday season as a married couple rolled around, everyone wanted us to travel to them and continue the traditions we’d been doing since we were kids. We did our best to accommodate everyone, but were left with expensive plane tickets, unmet expectations, and no time to create our own family traditions.

That’s why when we have kids, we decided to do a few things differently. First, we put a pause on holiday travel. Second, we made Halloween our family’s biggest celebration and embraced it in all its spooky, scary glory.

We go big on decorations with a 12-foot skeleton, multiple inflatables, and countless pumpkins by our front door. We host our friends and their kids for a quick pizza dinner before trick or treating. And my husband grills hot dogs for the entire neighborhood. Yes, really!

Here’s why picking a less popular holiday as our family’s biggest celebration lessened the holiday stress and helped us create our own family traditions.

Halloween comes with lower expectations

Since our kids don’t usually get Halloween off school, the expectation for travel is practically non-existent. Dinner is a low key affair, (think, four or five delivery pizzas to share) since our kids are chomping at the bit to start trick-or-treating, anyway.

While I love to decorate for Halloween, many of our decorations are reused year after year. Plus, my kids love to decorate and make things spooky, too — so the onus of making the house festive doesn’t fall squarely on me.

The financial burden is lessened

Apart from buying costumes and candy, Halloween really doesn’t come with a big financial burden. For example, while our kids have various Halloween events, including trunk-or-treats, parties, and Halloween night, we stick to a one-costume only rule.

Our Halloween decor is a mix of Dollar Store finds, Target pieces, and of course, our giant skeleton. While the latter was a bit pricier, it’s our one splurge and brings us (and the neighborhood) so much joy.

It leaves room for new traditions

Christmas and Thanksgiving often come with their own set of built-in traditions. The elaborate meals, multiple gift exchanges, and putting up lights and other outdoor decor all come to mind. We’re a pretty busy family, so after we’ve done all the traditional activities, we don’t have a lot of bandwidth for new ones.

Celebrating Halloween in a big way gives us the time and space to create our own traditions. For example, my husband grills hot dogs for the entire neighborhood. Last year, he made 150 total dogs. This year, we’re expecting 200. Kids love it, since many are too excited to eat before they set out trick-or-treating. And parents approve, too, since it gives their kids to eat something other than sugar.

Grilling hot dogs is a tradition that my husband brought from his childhood. When he was growing up, there was a dad in his neighborhood who did the same thing. He loved it so much he decided to do it in our neighborhood and has earned the moniker of “hot dog man.”

Halloween isn’t for everyone. Many parents (and kids) aren’t crazy about the spooky decor, the costumes, or all the sugary treats. But for our family, picking a less popular holiday as our family’s unofficial favorite has lessened the holiday pressure and allowed for our own sweet and spooky traditions.