Sotheby’s Global Fine Arts Chairman Allan Schwartzman Is Leaving the Auction House Amid a Continuing Staff Shakeup

Allan Schwartzman, a top art advisor who shook up the art
business when his art advisory firm was acquired by Sotheby’s for
$50 million in 2016, is leaving the auction house. At a time
when Sotheby’s is experiencing shakeups at all levels
under its new ownership, Schwartzman will transition into a
strategic consulting role and strike out on his own to develop an
independent art advisory venture.

Moving forward, the advisory division of the auction house will
be led by Nina del Rio, who previously served as vice chairman,
Americas, and head of museum, private, and corporate art services
at Sotheby’s.

Schwartzman said the conversations about his departure began a
little over a year ago, but were finalized in recent
months. “I still think of myself as the kid in the art world—I
entered it was 19 years old,” Schwartzman told Artnet News. “I woke
up a little over a year ago, 62 years of age, and I thought, I have
been a curator, an art dealer briefly, a journalist, a critic, an
analyst of the art market, and an advisor… I’ve done virtually
everything in the field other than make art. Through this
accumulation of experience, I realize that there’s more work to be
done that I’m really excited about that is best launched
independently.”

Schwartzman co-founded Art Agency, Partners with former
Christie’s executive Amy Cappellazzo in 2014 and served as chairman
of Sotheby’s global fine arts division for the past four years. The
acquisition of the firm, completed under Sotheby’s former CEO Tad
Smith, made waves in the art business as a bold effort to beef up
private sales at the auction house and as a cornerstone of Smith’s
strategy to transform Sotheby’s into a full-service art
business.

But the direction of the company has shifted under its new
ownership. After French-Israeli telecom magnate Patrick Drahi spent
$3.8 billion to take Sotheby’s private last summer, he wasted no
time cutting costs and shaking up departments. Over the past nine
months, top executives including Smith and CFO Mike Goss have been
replaced by executives from Drahi’s other companies. In December,
following an internal reorganization that separated Sotheby’s into
two global divisions—“fine arts” and “luxury, art, and
objects”—Cappellazzo was appointed
to lead the former.

When AAP was first acquired by Sotheby’s, the boutique advisory
had a staff of 15. A spokesperson for Sotheby’s did not immediately
respond to a request for comment about the current size of the
staff; the press release announcing the advisory’s new leadership
does not explicitly mention Art Agency, Partners but states that
“Sotheby’s will begin offering an expanded suite of advisory
services to both new and mature art enthusiasts as well as
organizations and institutions, at varied price points and across
all collecting categories.”

Schwartzman is known for advising some of the top contemporary
art collectors in the world, including Dallas connoisseur Howard
Rachofsky and Brazilian mining magnate Bernardo Paz, whose Inhotim
museum is one of the country’s most famous tourist attractions.
Schwartzman remains creative director of Inhotim, a position he has
held since the institution’s inception. “The core of clients I have
worked with, I hope and expect that I’ll be continuing to work
with,” he told Artnet News.

Schwartzman’s high-profile advisory relationships have not been
without controversy, including his membership on the advisory board of Saudi
Arabia’s Royal Commission for Al Ula, a region about 200
miles north of Medina that Saudi Arabia has been working to
transform into a tourist hub. Moving forward, Schwartzman will
remain on the advisory board.

In addition to his role as an art advisor, Schwartzman was
a founding staff member of the New Museum of Contemporary Art in
New York City and served as curator there from 1977 to 1980. He has
also written about art for outlets including The New
Yorker, the New York Times, Vogue,
and Art in America.

Additional reporting by Julia Halperin

The post Sotheby’s Global Fine Arts Chairman Allan
Schwartzman Is Leaving the Auction House Amid a Continuing Staff
Shakeup appeared first on artnet News.