Robert Mnuchin, a retired banker who became an art dealer, reflects on his career as an organizer of insightful and original exhibitions. In an era when galleries have expanded across the world with multiple venues and large sales teams, Mnuchin remains a committed individual dealer advising and supporting clients in their acquisitions. Mnuchin’s unabated passion and a record of groundbreaking shows that gather works rarely seen together by a single artist—some lent by leading museums and collectors—has won him the confidence of the world’s best-known collectors. 

Presented by The Macallan.

Robert Mnuchin's Legendary Career

Mari-Claudia Jiménez is Chairman, Managing Director & Worldwide Head Business Development Global Fine Arts, Sotheby’s. In this podcast, she connects the challenges of 2020 to the incredible art market successes of 2021. The pandemic revealed a new market environment where in-person viewings are no longer requisite for sales but digital and AR technologies are key. Jimenez explains that big market players like Sotheby’s focus on global reach. The notable growth in Asia is having a broader effect on the market as collectors are no longer strictly bound by the former collecting categories but they view luxury goods and a diverse variety of artworks as essential elements of their fine art collections.

editing & original music by Colin Ketchen

Sotheby's Mari-Claudia Jiménez Looks Ahead

A partner at Mnuchin Gallery since 2013, Sukanya Rajaratnam has played an important role in connecting some of the world’s most respected collectors with artists whose work has been previously overlooked or undervalued. Trained in finance but finding her way into the art world, Rajaratnam explains that although she is self-taught in art history and deal-making, her experience looking for value in the financial world has been instrumental in her role as an art dealer. In this podcast, she talks about the exhibitions Mnuchin Gallery has put on for artists like Ed Clark, Sam Gilliam, Lynda Benglis, Mary Lovelace O’Neal and more.

Sukanya Rajaratnam Redefines the Canon at Mnuchin Gallery

Sonya Roth has been a prominent Los Angeles collector for two decades. Originally a criminal prosecutor, she was an early champion of the current generation of emerging artists and collectors and played an important role in the growth of LA’s contemporary art scene. Since 2015, Roth has led Christie’s Los Angeles office which moved to an expanded Beverly Hills location two years later. Roth is now the Managing Director for Christie’s Western US Region leading the firm’s growth strategy by focusing on client engagement and strategic business development. With Frieze Los Angeles opening today, Roth talks about the unique role artists play in LA's collecting culture, the importance of the entertainment industry and the changing nature of collecting in the city.

Sonya Roth is Bullish on Los Angeles

In this London 2022 Winter auction preview, we speak to Helen Newman at Sotheby's, who will tell us about their $60 million Magritte,  half a dozen Monets, a Picasso and a Van Gogh. Katharine Arnold at Christie's will discuss their late Francis Bacon triptych, a portrait by Lucian Freud, as well as a Bridget Riley work held by the same family for 57 years. Giovanna Bertazzoni tells us about Christie's restituted Franz Marc painting and their surrealist Picasso. Finally, Cheyenne Westphal goes through the long list of breakout artists—like Lauren Quin, Doron Langberg, Jadé Fadojutimi, and Emily Mae Smith—at Phillips and others whose markets continue to roll on. But she also takes a moment to discuss a rare, unseen work of Sigmar Polke coming from the well-known collection of Emily and Jerry Spiegel.

Magritte, Monet, Bacon, Freud & Picasso—Preview London's 2022 Winter Auctions

Jacky Ho is Christie's Head of Evening sale for the Hong Kong auctions. In this podcast, he discusses the growth of these sales into perhaps the most global auctions of the international calendar. We discuss the interests and tastes of Christie's clients in the region, their strategies for collecting and many of the artists whose markets have emerged in Asia.

Jacky Ho Explains the Market in Hong Kong and China

Bethany Collins has a new show, Cadence, at PATRON gallery in Chicago where she presents work that explores the political and social evolution of three songs, The Star-Spangled Banner, Auld Lang Syne and Dixie. Creating installations with music and "hymnals" that present the evolving lyrics inspired by competing political and social movements, Collins discusses the liberation and frustration of making art through "using the language of others to make sense of the world."

Bethany Collins: Art from an Enduring Melody

The sale of Harry and Linda Macklowe’s art collection was one of the most anticipated events of 2021. The first part of the two-part sale was held in November after a delay caused by the Covid pandemic. Sotheby’s had made an aggressive play for the collection. As Brooke Lampley points out in this podcast, a new team was in place with a lot to lose from a weak sale. In the end, the sale and the season saw prices beyond anyone’s expectations. On May 16, Sotheby’s will sell another $200 million or more in art from the Macklowe collection. These are additional examples of work by the artists the Macklowes had bought in depth.

Brooke Lampley on the $676 Million Macklowe Sale—and This Season's Follow Up

Phillips Auction house has a reputation for creating markets for artists who don’t have a track record. Over the last several years, the house has grown rapidly to become a venue for a range of works including some of the biggest lots of the season. 

In this podcast, we’ll talk to Phillips Basquiat expert Scott Nussbaum about the massive Jean-Michel Basquiat painting Phillips will be auctioning for Yusaku Maezawa. We’ll also hear from Deputy Chairman Robert Manley about a rare Calder mobile, an early Yayoi Kusama painting, a much in demand Helen Frankenthaler, and a bright red-and-yellow Rothko, as well as works by Hans Hoffmann and Carmen Herrera. It wouldn’t be Phillips if we didn’t also speak to Rebekah Bowling about the auction debut of Justin Caguiat, the largest work to come to market  by Colombian artist Maria Berrio and another rare Amy Sherald painting. 

The sale takes place in New York on May 18th at 7pm.

Phillips May Sale Preview: Basquiat's Devil, Calder's Snow Flurry, Kusama's Infinity Net

The May week of sales began with Andy Warhol's $195 million Shot Sage Blue Marilyn. That was the work everybody expected to be the most talked about lot of the week. But on the third night of sales, something extraordinary and authentic happened. A work by former professional football player and artist Ernie Barnes was offered for sale. Positioned at the auction house in a highly trafficked place, it had begun to stir interest. When the bidding began, that interest erupted into a war between an art advisor sitting in the audience bidding for a client and Houston trader Bill Perkins. In the end, Perkins paid $15 million for the lot originally estimated around $100,000. That was a lot more than he had originally intended to pay but much less than was he was determined to spend to get his prize. Bill Perkins joins us to talk about the experience.

Good Times: Bill Perkins Explains Why He Bought Ernie Barnes's The Sugar Shack for $15 million

Andrew Fabricant became Chief Operating Officer of Gagosian Gallery a year before the global pandemic radically transformed the business of dealing art. In this podcast, Fabricant discusses the recent auctions in New York, the unexpected surge in the art market during the pandemic and what that means for the future of the art market as the global economy rebalances toward a post-pandemic world. We also delve into the opportunities and challenges involved in running an art-dealing enterprise with more than 300 employees, 19 locations and reputation as an aggressive sales organization. I hope you enjoy the conversation.

Andrew Fabricant Takes Gagosian Gallery into the Future

In her 17-year career at Sotheby’s, Gabriela Palmieri presided over the most valuable Contemporary art day sale ever held. She was involved in the sale of Adam Sender’s collection and worked with the estate of Allan Stone. Since establishing Palmieri Fine Art, Gabriela has worked on the Emily and Jerry Spiegel collection and the sale of Barbarlee Diamondstein-Spielvogel and Carl Spielvogel’s collection. She also advised on the Brillembourg-Caprilles collection and the sale of a major collection of Pictures Generation works along with her work for many other clients. 

In this podcast, we discuss the recent May sales in New York as well as her take on what collectors want in the market right now.

Gabriela Palmieri: How Collectors Navigate the Competitive Market for Emerging Artists

Frank Walter’s rarely seen work is being exhibited at David Zwirner Gallery on the Upper East Side of Manhattan until July 29th. He was an agriculture expert from the island of Antigua in the Caribbean. After a multi-year sojourn in Europe, Walter returned to Antigua where he spent the rest of his life making art. Few saw these works until the 2017 Venice Biennale. There Walter was featured at the first ever pavilion for Antigua and Barbuda. 

Hilton Als is a writer for the New Yorker. He is also a frequent curator of art exhibitions. Als happened to be in Venice in 2017 and came upon Walter’s work by chance. In this podcast, we talk about Frank Walter and his art. We also discuss Hilton Als’s career as a curator. He was involved in the seminal Black Male show staged at the Whitney in 1994. Since then he has put on shows for Victoria Miro Gallery, David Zwirner and the Yale Center for British Art. Als next show is an exhibition on the life and work of Joan Didion.  It will be the latest in a number of innovative shows he has created around literary figures.  In these shows, he has found a new way to present ideas in gallery spaces.

Hilton Als: Discovering Frank Walter and Finding New Ways to Present Literature and Art

Phillips Chairman, Asia, Jonathan Crockett talks about the challenges of selling art in Hong Kong over the past few years. As the auction house moves into its new headquarters at the West Kowloon Culture District, steps away from the M+ Museum, Crockett talks about growing interest in Western artists among Asian collectors and the market for emerging talents.

Jonathan Crockett on Phillips's Strength in Asia

Christie's Chairman Marc Porter talks about Paul Allen as a collector and the role philanthropy now plays in the sale of the major art collections of our time. Max Carter discusses the challenge of estimating a wide array of artists in a collection that ranges over hundreds of years. Led by works from Cézanne, Seurat, Gauguin, Klimt, van Gogh, Boticelli, Manet, Jasper Johns, Lucian Freud, David Hockney and many more artists.

The Billion-Dollar Paul G. Allen Collection at Christie's with Marc Porter and Max Carter

In 2022, artist Lynne Drexler's work exploded on the art market. An artist who had briefly shown in the early 1960s in New York, she continued to work on a remote island in Maine until her death in 1999. Two decades later, she became the artist of the moment. Sukanya Rajaratnam and Christine Berry have collaborated on a dual-gallery show of Drexler's work from her first decade, 1959-1969, The shows at Berry Campbell and Mnuchin have drawn in new audiences and further burnished Drexler's reputation. In this podcast, Christie's Julian Ehrlich joins Berry and Rajaratnam to tell the story of Lynne Drexler's extraordinary year.

Lynne Drexler's Extraordinary Year: Christine Berry, Sukanya Rajaratnam and Julian Ehrlich Explain

Laura Paulson is Principal at Gagosian Art Advisory where she has recently advised on the sale of David M. Solinger's collection which featured the much-talked about Willem de Kooning "Collage." Earlier this year, Paulson also advised on the sale of the Macklowe collection which galvanized the market and was briefly the most valuable single-owner collection ever sold. In this podcast, Paulson discusses the strategy behind the Solinger heirs decision not to take a global guarantee or third-party guarantees on any of the lots. The result was a 100% sell-through rate on the collection. From her vantage point as a former senior specialist at both Sotheby's and Christie's and in her role as advisor to collections reaching their term, Paulson has a valuable perspective on the current market as well as a considered view as to how the next few years might play out.

Gagosian's Laura Paulson on Managing the Big Collections for Sale

Noah Horowitz returned to Art Basel as CEO after a year and a half away at Sotheby's. In his new role, which is also a new role for the company, Horowitz is rebuilding the Art Basel team around a strategy for a bigger art fair business with more galleries, more fairs and more opportunities. In this podcast, he talks about the importance of each fair in the Art Basel constellation meeting the needs of galleries, collectors and the cities that surround them. But he also looks toward the future and the ways in which Art Basel can grow beyond the art fair business it grew out of.

Art Basel CEO Noah Horowitz on the Fair's Future

The art market has been holding its breath for nearly three months. How will the global economy affect the art market in 2023? With the important London auctions now on view, we speak to Sotheby's Helena Newman, Phillips's Cheyenne Westphal, Christie's Keith Gill, Olivier Camu and Tessa Lord, as well as Sotheby's James Sevier to learn more about the upcoming lots including a $45 million Kandinsky on offer through restitution, a several Gerhard Richter abstract paintings at different price points, a very early work by Lucian Freud, a collection of diverse Surrealist talents assembled by a San Francisco "tech" couple and much more.

London Winter Sales Preview: Kandinsky, Munch, Magritte, Richter, Picasso, de Kooning and much more

Philip Guston Now is the biggest international retrospective of the artist's work in a generation. It's debut at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC this month comes shortly after the announcement of a major gift of the artist's work to the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Both the retrospective and the donation contain a considerable number of works from the artist's daughter, Musa Mayer. 

In this podcast, we speak to the National Gallery's Harry Cooper, a curator of the show, about Guston's long and varied career. Cooper also talks about the confusion around Guston's symbolism and difficulty in knowing the meaning or intent of his paintings. 

After that, we speak to collector Claude Reich about Guston's market and why the artist attracts so many elite collectors yet still remains significantly undervalued compared to his peers.

Understanding Philip Guston Now: The National Gallery's Harry Cooper; Collector Claude Reich

Editions, or the sales of prints and multiple works, is an auction category that is rarely discussed. For many artists, editioned work is a significant part of their practice. Over the last several years, there has been an explosion in interest and auction activity. In 2021, Phillips saw a record-breaking year for its Editions sales. Since then, auction volume has risen another 30% to a total of $40 million in sales in 2022. 

Phillips editions department was founded in 2008. Since that time, there has been a five-fold increase in bidders registered with the house. To discuss the growth of the editions market, we spoke with Robert Kennan, Phillips’s head of editions in Europe.

The Exploding Editions Market with Phillips Robert Kennan

CJ Hendry is an artist “of sorts,” she says. She’s an Instagram phenom,  an entrepreneur, a copyright provocateur and an impresario. Last year she converted a church in London into an immersive experience that involved a never-ending indoor “snowstorm.” This month in Brooklyn, she has created a massive indoor playground for children and adults for a show called Plaid. 

From her renovated Brooklyn townhouse just featured in Architectural Digest to acting as her own gallery to a documentary about her Copyright Infringement public art projects, there’s no shortage of topics to discuss. Hendry and I sat down in her studio to go through them.

CJ Hendry: The Artist as Impresario

Cecily Brown has been a prominent painter for more than a quarter century. But starting in the last 5 years, her importance in the art market has grown substantially. With the opening of Death and the Maid at New York’s Metropolitan Museum, it seemed like a good time to discuss her market. The Met show is one of only a handful of museum shows that Brown has participated in including Boston’s MFA in 2006 and the Louisiana Museum in 2018. 

To get a better sense of how collectors view and value her work, I spoke to Hugo Nathan, one of the principles of art advisory Beaumont Nathan. As an art dealer and collector himself, Hugo has worked on a broad range of art from the Renaissance to Contemporary. His firm have advised a number of clients on the market for Cecily Brown’s work. We spoke early on the morning that the Met show opened

Cecily Brown: Hugo Nathan on the Artist and Her Market

The global auction and art fair calendar hardly seems like the fascinating subject that it really is. The art world still operates on a schedule largely established decades ago. The disruption of the global pandemic seemed to offer an opportunity to reshape those assumptions. Asia has become more important and art fairs are proliferating from Seoul to Los Angeles and Paris. 

Nevertheless, 2022 saw the old auction calendar re-emerge. Judging by the very strong numbers posted last year, sales haven’t suffered. 

So what will happen next? 

To answer that question, I spoke to Phillips CEO Stephen Brooks. Phillips is the first to open a dedicated Hong Kong headquarters. His rivals will have their own premises next year. That means there is likely to be an auction season twice a year in Hong Kong either in 2024 or sometime thereafter just as there is in New York and London. 

How that will fit into the calendar and how auction houses view the growing number of sales opportunities is the subject of our conversation. I hope you enjoy it.

The Global Auction Calendar with Phillips CEO Stephen Brooks

S.I. Newhouse Jr. was a titan of the media business in the late 20th Century, presiding over Conde Nast but also owning with his brother Donald Advance Publication’s chain of newspapers and other cable television properties and networks. 

He was one of the preeminent collectors of Post-war and Contemporary art. Through the painter Alexander Liberman, who served as Conde Nast’s Editorial Director, he met the abstract expressionist Barnett Newman. Through Newman, he developed an interest in abstract expressionism and color field painting. But Newhouse was also a restless and inquisitive collector open to pursuing new ideas and remaking his collection continually. 

Alex Rotter, Chairman of Christie’s 20/21 art departments, and Max Carter, a Vice Chairman, sat down to talk about Newhouse as a collector and the important works that are being sold this season.

S.I. Newhouse: Portrait of a Collector

When the $270 million dollar Gerald Fineberg collection was announced, Christie’s Sara Friedlander remarked that the Boston real estate developer, “bought art like a curator.” 

Citing his ability to go deep into key movements like the artists of Black Mountain College, the Ninth Street Women, Gutai, Pop, Minimalism, Arte Povera and the Pictures Generation, Friedlander also points out that Fineberg had important works by Gerhard Richter, Christopher Wool, Alice Neel, Man Ray, Beauford Delaney and Barkley Hendricks. 

We sat down this week to talk through as much of the art on offer as we could possibly discuss in 30 minutes. Highlights from the Fineberg collection are on view at Christie’s until May 13th when the entire collection will be on display at the auction house’s Rockefeller Center headquarters. The highlights are hung in an engaging “salon” style—that means the works are sitting edge-to-edge—but the final exhibition will offer a different perspective. 

Auction season in New York is a rare opportunity to see art. The auction houses are open to the public. So avail yourself of this privilege starting May 6th.

The Gerald Fineberg Collection with Christie's Sara Friedlander

The New York auctions begin this week with just over 2000 lots on offer. The combined low estimate is nearly $1.37 billion dollars. If we remove the Allen collection from last November’s sales, we’re still at about the same level in terms of the value of the low estimate.  

If that doesn’t surprise you, you’re lucky.

That means you didn’t spend three months after November’s auctions waiting for a global recession to begin. During that period, little art traded hands. Now that the economic slowdown hasn’t happened—yet—it would seem as though the art market is trying to make up for lost time and take advantage of this goldilocks moment. 

Pre-sale guarantees seem to be down but the freight train of collections and estates hasn’t stopped either. 

In this podcast, we’re going to hear from the specialists at Christie’s, Phillips and Sotheby’s about some of the lots selling this month. There’s so much high quality art on offer, we’re not going to get to it all. But here are some of the interesting stories.

Mo Ostin Collection; Press family collection, Basquiat, Rousseau & NY HIghlights, May 2023

Natasha Degen is the chair of the graduate program in art market studies at FIT in New York. She has just published a book called Merchants of Style, Art and Fashion after Warhol. 

That subtitle doesn’t really capture the depth and nuance of her book. SHe has written an anatomy of the ways art and fashion have become intertwined in the present-day global economy. 

It’s not just that major fashion brands have latched onto artists as way to market their wares and their brands. Degen unpacks the cultural codes and institutional structures that have promoted this convergence. In this podcast, she also speculates on what has been gained and lost by both art and fashion—and what’s at risk going forward.

Art and Fashion Converge with FIT's Natasha Degen

In this podcast, David Galperin, Sotheby’s Head of Contemporary Art for the Americas talks about the success of Justin Caguiat’s work in last month’s The Now sale, the continuing success of Jadé Fadojutimi’s work and how the cycle of discovery has accelerated. Why do young artists or historically overlooked artists launch so quickly into auction sales cycles? How does the discovery market function and what’s the interplay between galleries and auction houses.

Sotheby's David Galperin on Finding the Next Big Name

Dane Jensen just opened his own art advisory firm in Los Angeles. He has worked in the art and auction industry as a curator, auction house specialist and art advisor. He became much more visible after engaging in an epic bidding war over Ernie Barnes’s The Sugar Shack II that sold to energy trader Bill Perkins for more than $15 million at Christie’s in May of 2022. In this podcast, Jensen talks about the role of an art advisor as well as what makes Los Angeles distinctive in terms of its collectors, their goals and what they value. We also talk about Ernie Barnes, how his market has rapidly globalized and, of course, what it was like to bid in that wild auction for The Sugar Shack.

Dane Jensen on Art Advising in Los Angeles and the Ernie Barnes Market

The Artelligence Podcast presented by LiveArt unpacks the mysteries of the global art market through interviews with collectors, dealers, auction house specialists, lawyers, art advisors, and the myriad individuals who make the art market a beguiling mixture of sublime beauty and commercial acumen.

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