Auction House to Manage Artist Careers

Last week I was mentioning the expanding landscape of auction houses and how they are continuing to encourage on allied fields within the art market. In a post called Change or Die (click HERE to read) I had a short list of some of the allied art market fields auction houses were expanding/encroaching into, including

• private sales
• collection m
• anagement
• appraisalsart market trends
• art advisory
• scientific and technological analysis
• logistics
• storage
• education
• curated sales
• exhibitions
• finance
• adventure, personal growth and lifestyle enrichment auctions

Now we can also add artist career management to the list.

The Wall Street Journal posted an article on the recent Sotheby's hiring of Christy MacLear, of the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation to head a division which is reported to include artist management.

The article points out some potential conflicts of interest, such as the temptation of the auction house to auction artist works that may impact future artist recognition, sales and earnings.

The Wall Street Journal reports

Should an auction house manage an artist’s career? Sotheby’s thinks so.

In a move likely to cause a stir in the art world, the auction house said Wednesday that it is expanding its art-advisory division to include the management of major living artists as well as artists’ estates—territory that has long been claimed by galleries and private foundations.

The house has hired Christy MacLear, chief executive officer of the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, to spearhead the effort within its Fine Arts Division starting next month

Dealers and art lawyers said the move further blurs the distinction between galleries, which are known for handling artists’ careers, and auction houses, which mainly resell works by market-tested favorites. Over the past decade, auctioneers have crowded into gallery terrain, setting up gallery-like shows in their sales rooms and privately brokering sales of art rather than putting them up for public bid.

Even so, art lawyer Thomas Danziger said the latest move feels unprecedented. “This is huge,” he said, calling the move a “tightrope act” that will require the auction house to balance its need to appease shareholders seeking profits with artists seeking long-term guidance on how to get—and stay—in the art-history textbooks.

“If there’s a tight quarter, will Sotheby’s be tempted to sell off works in a way that could impact their artists’ careers?” Mr. Danziger said.

Marc Glimcher, the president of Pace Gallery, which represents the Rauschenberg estate, praised Ms. MacLear as “talented,” but said auction houses shouldn’t try to poach artists from galleries if they want to continue serving as a neutral barometer for art values overall. “For an auction house to represent a living artist is like MGM representing Fred Astaire—you can’t tie up all the sides of a transaction,” Mr. Glimcher said.

The dealer said the situation could prove particularly thorny if price levels ever plummet for artists allied with the auction house. If the house intervenes in an artist’s market too heavily by removing works for sale or mounting additional shows to promote their work, dealers and collectors might cry foul; if the house lets prices free fall, the artists or their estate trustees might complain or cut ties as well.

“The people representing artists need to be advocates,” Mr. Glimcher said, “not a huge conglomeration that boosts or cuts down artists’ markets whenever buyers say so.”

Allan Schwartzman, chairman of Sotheby’s Fine Arts Division, said its advisers will maintain separate databases so the division’s artists’ works and plans can be kept confidential from auction specialists—in the same manner advisers already shield the collectors with whom they currently work. Moreover, Mr. Schwartzman said artists who ally with the house will pay for counsel on a retainer basis, not through art sales held at the house. Advisory staff won’t receive commissions for works sold through the house by artists they represent, he said.

Mr. Schwartzman said he had advised artists and artist estates before joining Sotheby’s in January, but he and partner Amy Cappellazzo “didn’t have the bandwidth” to expand their efforts once they joined the auction house. That is why they encouraged Sotheby’s to hire Ms. MacLear, a business strategist who transformed Robert Rauschenberg’s $9 million estate into a foundation with over $1 billion in assets and programs that range from scholarships for young art writers to artists’ residencies at Rauschenberg’s 20-acre property on Captiva Island, Fla.

“The first generation of baby boomer artists are sitting on important troves of art but haven’t prepared anything for the long term,” he said. “Christy is a master at stepping in and helping them evaluate.”

Ms. MacLear said galleries excel at selling prized art to museums and collectors, but fewer offer the kind of detailed financial and estate planning needed to help artists transition from a studio setup to a legacy foundation. Artists typically rely on their dealers, friends or studio managers to help them realize any posthumous plans they might lay out in their wills for art-related scholarships or other projects. Such arrangements, Ms. MacLear said, can bog down if the caretakers lack legal or financial expertise. In some cases, she said artists’ ad hoc planning can deteriorate into “unwanted fire sales” or financial abuses.

“This isn’t about a quick sale, or a sale at all,” she said. “It’s about helping artists create a vision for the long term.”

Before taking over the Rauschenberg Foundation six years ago, Ms. MacLear was executive director of architect Philip Johnson’s Glass House, a 49-acre estate in Connecticut with 14 buildings designed by Johnson between 1949 and 1999 and now managed by the National Trust. She also worked as a business strategist for Celebration, the Walt Disney Co.’s master-plan community in Florida.

Christopher Rauschenberg, the artist’s son, said Ms. MacLear successfully took the Rauschenberg foundation “from a fledgling into soaring flight.” He said the board will start looking for a new director.

Source: The Wall Street Journal