Sotheby's Art Show

Carol Vogel is reporting in the NY Times that Sotheby's will launch a show/exhibition to be held in its 10th floor space of its New York showroom.  The show features artwork based upon Dantes Divine Comedy.  It is scheduled to run from September 30th through October, 19th.  Much of the artwork will be for sale, but there will not be any price tags.  Interested collectors will have to ask Sotheby's staff for additional information.  There is a catalog available for $65.00.  The artwork which is for sale is said to be priced between $35,000.00 to over $10 million.

As Vogel points out, and as I have noted in past posts on the AW Blog, there is a continued blurring of the lines between the large international auction houses and art galleries.

Vogel states

The organizer is Lisa Dennison, the former director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, who joined Sotheby’s in 2007 and is now its chairwoman for North and South America. She called on experts throughout the company for help. “We see this as an extension of our private sale business,” she said in a telephone interview. Referring to the company’s Upper East Side headquarters, she added, “Our 10th-floor space is often unoccupied, and we wanted to do something there that will use all our specialists and that crosses geographies.”

Ms. Dennison was quick to point out that Sotheby’s had organized exhibitions before. It has shown and sold sculptures on the grounds of Chatsworth in Derbyshire, England, and other stately homes in the English countryside. And last year it held an exhibition of the collection belonging to Steven A. Cohen, the hedge-fund billionaire, also in its 10th-floor galleries, although Sotheby’s experts said then that nothing was for sale.

To read the full article, click HERE.