De Gunzburg Blazing: All the Auction Action
A report from inside Sotheby's record design sale. Also, the drumbeat of Sotheby's debt, how Christie's won Newhouse, Dennison's family collection, and a trend emerges at AIPAD.
Dear art lovers,
When my former Christie’s colleague, design expert Simon Andrews, told me that the sale of the Jean and Terry De Gunzburg collection was going to be “epoch-defining,” I knew I had to be in the room. I’ll tell you who was there—and who bid on what.
Also in today’s issue, I reveal how Christie’s came to sell the collection of S.I. Newhouse, Jr.; muse on the Financial Times’ articles about Sotheby’s debt; share some background on Sotheby’s chairman Lisa Dennison’s family collection; and report from the opening of AIPAD’s The Photography Show (a line around the block!).
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Comings and goings: I hear that Ralph DeLuca, who joined Sotheby’s last year to lead its memorabilia department (while somehow continuing to run his advisory business on the side), was quietly excised. No shocker there. His first sale in October was cancelled because of authenticity concerns, then a single-lot online auction of a Superman costume in December was quietly pulled.
Also, Dana Chernock left Sotheby’s, where she was a business director in the global fine arts division, to join Amy Cappellazzo’s advisory as a director, and Joey Quigley departed Christie’s, where he was business development director in trusts and estates, to go out on his own.
Notable prices: Last week Sotheby’s wine department posted on their Instagram that they broke the record twice for two magnums of 1870 Château Lafite in their ‘Immortal Vintages’ sale, selling one for $109,000 and then another one for $200,000. But, in fact, Zachy’s achieved the record of $378,500 for a magnum of 1870 Lafite last fall in their Jacqueline de Rothschild Piatigorsky auction. It’s a good case study on how provenance adds value in the wine market. The Sotheby’s bottles came from Glamis Castle, but they had been traded several times since that 1971 sale, whereas the Piatigorsky magnum was fresh to the market.
In Hong Kong, Sotheby’s set a record for a Cartier ‘Crash’ watch, when a rare 1987 version sold for $2 million against an estimate of just $400,000. A Cartier ‘Tutti-Frutti’ necklace with two parrots sparked a bidding war, eventually making $2.8 million against an estimate of $830,000. Last year I penned an article charting how Cartier fuels the secondary market by buying back some of their own historic pieces for their archive.
At Freeman’s, John Jacob Astor IV’s Patek Philippe for Tiffany & Co. pocket watch made $1 million against an estimate of $300,000, and his gold Battin & Co. pencil case made $204,800 against an estimate of $10,000. Both were recovered with his body from the Titanic wreckage. At Bonhams, a recently rediscovered multi-panel screen, Figures with Blossoms, from 1900, by Thomas Wilmer Dewing, sold for $826,000 against an estimate of $300,000. They displayed it to great effect in the historic Steinway Hall that is part of their new 57th Street headquarters.
Nepo-auction: At 5:15pm on Friday, just as art journalists were leaving their desks for the weekend, Sotheby’s announced that the collection of Lisa Dennison’s parents, Saul and Ellyn Dennison, will be offered in next month’s contemporary art day sale. According to a 2007 article in New York Magazine, her mother encouraged her interest in art, and her father, who was president of the New Museum when it opened on the Bowery in 2007, manufactured auto accessories. Last year she lost both of them within months of each other.
Now she’s shepherding their legacy through this auction event. Her voice shines through in the press release, describing them as “deeply engaged collectors whose lives were shaped by a sustained commitment to artists and the evolving language of contemporary art.” The collection, acquired over four decades and displayed in a wing adjacent to their New Jersey home, includes works by Nick Cave, Francesco Clemente, Félix Gonzáles-Torres, Jenny Holzer, Robert Mapplethorpe, David Salle, Richard Serra, and Mark Tansey.
A photo start: When I arrived at the Park Avenue Armory on Wednesday for AIPAD’s Photography Show a little after the 4:00pm opening, the line wrapped down 66th Street. Amidst the crowd I spotted photographers Rose Hartman and Andres Serrano, former Brooklyn Museum director Arnold Lehman, advisor Sarah Stein-Sapir, collector Gary Sokol, and lawyer Michael Cohen (yes, that one). A couple different market participants noted the prevalence of classic photography on offer, compared to the abundance of contemporary works in recent years.
Everyone I spoke to was happy with the venue, crowd, galleries, and overall presentation under the leadership of director Lydia Melamed Johnson. She bestowed this year’s AIPAD award upon Deborah Willis, chair of NYU’s photography department. It was a family affair with her son, artist Hank Willis Thomas, and his wife, Whitney Museum curator Rujeko Hockley, and their two young daughters, there to celebrate. It’s a pity Ortuzar gallery scheduled their Peter Hujar opening for the same night, which may have pulled some photo lovers away from the fair.
The event got me thinking about whether the model of having a ticketed fair opening to benefit a non-profit might work to bring new participants into the contemporary art sphere—or at least give it more of a feeling of community. These evening affairs, with food and drink, are always so convivial. Perhaps Frieze or the Armory Show could give it a try.
Sotheby’s fancy financial footwork: The Financial Times is keeping up the drumbeat of articles about Sotheby’s debt. On April 16 they published, “Sotheby’s demonstrates the subtle art of wriggling out of a cash squeeze,” and on April 21, “Sotheby’s strikes $100mn debt deal with KKR backed by auction fees.” KKR is a private equity firm co-founded by art collector Henry Kravis, who now serves as its co-executive chairman. (In 2019 there was speculation that Kravis may have been among those trying to put together a competitive bid to prevent Drahi from buying Sotheby’s.) The FT wrote, “As part of the debt deal struck in February, the auction house will pay an interest rate of more than 8 per cent on money it borrows, in order to, in effect, factor receivables from artwork sales.” However, the KKR facility remains undrawn. This raises questions.
