Displaying items by tag: Sotheby's

Michael McGinnis, president of auction house Phillips, is leaving the company after 16 years as the smaller rival to Christie’s and Sotheby’s undergoes a transformation under new senior management.

McGinnis will step down on Nov. 30 to spend time with his family and pursue other opportunities, Phillips said Thursday in an e-mailed statement. After founding the contemporary-art department in 1999, McGinnis became the boutique auctioneer’s chief executive officer in 2012 and held the post until CEO Edward Dolman’s arrival in 2014, when he assumed his current role.

Sotheby’s is offering employees voluntary buyouts to cut costs after a drop in third-quarter revenue grabbed more attention from the company’s investors than its largest ever semiannual auction season.

The auction house told employees in an e-mail Friday that if not enough employees make use of the buyouts, it may have to resort to layoffs. Sotheby’s didn’t say how many jobs it plans to cut.

It was a somewhat rocky start to the New York sales Wednesday night at Sotheby’s, as the lots from the estate of its former owner A. Alfred Taubman—breathlessly hyped due to the $500 million guarantee plunked down by the house to win it from its arch-rival Christie’s—often sold at below or barely over their low estimates, with some big-ticket lots not selling at all. The final total came to $377 million, inching past the low estimate for the sale by a few million and casting doubts on whether the auction giant can make back its record investment with the rest of the Taubman sales.

On November24th and 25th, 2015, Sotheby’s London will host a major two-day sale of art and antiques from the collection of the Bernheimers, one of Europe’s greatest art dealer dynasties.

The incredible story of the Bernheimer family is a tale of resilience and constant reinvention. Covering four generations of art dealers, it is permeated with the vicissitudes of 20th century history and, in many ways, charts the evolution of the dealer ‘trade’ over for the last 150 years. The Bernheimer business started with a tiny market stall in Munich in the mid-19th century and swiftly grew into the most illustrious antique and interior decoration emporium in the world, renowned for supplying royalty (e.g. King Ludwig II) and the elites of the time.

In January, Sotheby’s will offer an American folk art collection with some dark and risqué imagery. The auction consignors, Petra and Stephen Levin, philanthropists based in Florida, had filled their Vermont home with woodcarvings of prostitutes wrapped around clients ($30,000 to $50,000 for two pairs) and a shoeshine boy leering at a female customer’s legs ($30,000 to $50,000). In a diorama of a bar crowded with disheveled drunks ($20,000 to $30,000), cigarette butts are smeared on the floor.

There’s more than $2.1 billion of art for sale at the New York auctions next month. Almost half of it, including an Andy Warhol painting belonging to billionaire Steven A. Cohen, already has a buyer before the first paddle goes up.

When the two-week sales start Nov. 4, $1 billion worth of paintings and sculptures are guaranteed to sell by Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips at minimum prices regardless of what happens in the salesroom. The companies are lining up deep-pocketed backers for the guarantees or financing them with their own money -- a risky proposition because they can end up owning the works if there are no takers.

The Dallas Museum of Art acquired a marble head of Herakles, the Greek hero the Romans called Hercules, at a Sotheby’s, New York auction of Egyptian, Classical, and Western Asiatic Antiquities in June. The marble head is from the late 1st century A.D. and is set upon an unrelated bust from the mid-2nd century A.D. This ensemble was composed by the 18th-century French sculptor Lambert-Sigisbert Adam (1700–59), who created sculptures for King Louis XV of France and Frederick the Great of Prussia.

The acquisition is a gift of David T. Owsley through the Alvin and Lucy Owsley Foundation, and strengthens the Museum’s collection of ancient art of the Mediterranean, of which a selection is on view in the Museum’s Level 2 Classical galleries.

A. Alfred Taubman, the late billionaire developer and former owner of Sotheby’s auction house, was a boundless art collector whose taste spanned every period, genre and medium, from works of antiquity to contemporary art.

In advance of a series of sales of his 500-piece collection — believed to be worth more than $500 million — Sotheby’s has transformed its building inside and out to give a real sense of its depth and scope.

Orazio Gentileschi's Danaë (1621) will arrive at Sotheby's New York this January with an estimate of $25 to $35 million. The 17th-century painting provides a lens to reflect on just how far the Old Masters market has come in the past few decades.

The painting, which has an extensive exhibition history, including shows at the Getty, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Yale University, also has an interesting past in terms of provenance.