Results: Swann Galleries African American Fine Art

The other day I had lunch with fellow appraiser and Journal of Advanced Appraisal Studies -2009 contributor Alvah Beander. Alvah will also be speaking at the ISA Annual Conference in Charleston, SC on the the cultural art of the Gullah People. Alvah mentioned the upcoming African American specialty sale at Swann Galleries, scheduled for February 17th. I took a look at the sale catalog on the website and viewed the results. Overall the results were mixed, which is pretty common for auctions and sales in the art market today.

The total pre sale estimate ranged from $2-2.9 million for the 169 lots, of which 109 lots sold, representing a 64% sales rate. Acceptable in today's market, but not strong showing either. The total sale with buyers premium totaled $1.27 million. When given the number of bought in lots, it seems the lots that did sell, sold well. The top lot was a charcoal and crayon by Charles White's Move on Up a Little Higher (see image), which had a pre sale estimate of $200,000.00 - $250,000.00 and sold for $228,000.00 with buyers premium.

From the Swann Galleries website Swann launched a new department devoted to African-American Fine Art in February 2007. Today, we are the only major auction house to conduct regular sales of this material. At each African-American Fine Art auction benchmarks have been set for works by important and lesser-known artists.

African American art is another category of fine and decorative art that is growing in interest to collectors and dealers, while the values are showing positive signs of growth. As appraisers we need to be familiar with the market makers as well as those who specialize in the sale, brokering and appraising. To visit Swann Galleries click HERE.