Sotheby’s Will Reimagine the Auction Experience by Livestreaming Its Big-Money June Art Sales—Without an Audience

What will the high-flying, big-moneyed auction of the future
look like in our post-pandemic reality?

Sotheby’s executives, including new owner Patrick Drahi, gave an
early glimpse into that future through an online presentation on
May 29, in which they unveiled new seven-figure auction-lot
highlights, announced plans to allow by-appointment visits to
Sotheby’s New York gallery, and presented a virtual version of a
major upcoming auction scheduled for June 29.

“We’ve come up with something that is truly exciting and is
definitely a first for me as an auctioneer, and for the auction
world at large,” Oliver Barker, senior director and chairman of
Europe, said on the call. “For starters, this will be the very
first time that I’m taking the rostrum to London, in order to
conduct a New York sale.”

The June 29 auction, which will be livestreamed, starts at 6:30
p.m. EST with a single-owner sale of top works from the collection
of the late philanthropist Ginny Williams. Immediately
following that will be sales of Impressionist, Modern, and
contemporary artworks.

Viewers can follow the proceedings in high-definition, and each
lot will be accompanied by on-screen visuals. Bidders can take part
either by phone or online, with Barker fielding bids from Sotheby’s
specialists on phone banks—appropriately socially distanced, of
course—in New York, Hong Kong, and London via what he described as
“zero-latency video streams, broadcast to giant screens in a
control center studio setup.”

The new format resulted from brainstorming with the auction
house’s video and technology teams, Barker said.

“Just as COVID has encouraged us to
rethink how we do so many things, so too it has meant
revisiting how we stage these New York sales,” he
said, adding: “It will usher in an exciting new era of marquee
auctions at Sotheby’s, in which the best-established live auction
format is married with the latest technology.”

The auction house plans to open its New York galleries for
appointment-only visits, with all requisite precautions, starting
June 8.

In addition to other previously announced highlights,
such as a Francis Bacon triptych estimated to sell for in excess of
$60 million, Sotheby’s unveiled a new consignment: Pablo Picasso’s
Head of a Sleeping Woman (1934), a stunning portrait of
the artist’s lover, Marie-Therese, that is estimated to go for
between $9 million and $12 million. It was consigned by the
Washington, DC-based David Lloyd Kreeger Foundation, which has
owned it since 1962.

Sotheby’s also unveiled a contemporary highlight for an upcoming
live sale in Hong Kong that is scheduled for early July: Leave
Me in the Dark by Chinese artist Liu Ye, which is estimated to
sell for between $3.2 million and $4.5 million (HK$25 million to
HK$35 million).

It is one of only four documented grand-scale, single-panel
pieces featuring a figure by the artist, and is comparable to the
artist’s current top two auction-record artworks. The current
record of $6.6 million for SMOKE (2001–02) was set at
Sotheby’s Hong Kong last fall, according to the Artnet Price
Database.

While an upcoming Milan sale of contemporary art (June 4–16) is
online only, there are currently various other live auctions set to
take place in Geneva and Paris next month.

The post Sotheby’s Will Reimagine the Auction Experience by
Livestreaming Its Big-Money June Art Sales—Without an Audience
appeared first on artnet News.