The competition was strictly between Sotheby’s and Christie’s, and there was always a lot of heartache when you lost a consignment. We didn’t have the allure of a truly global audience for contemporary art because at the time, there wasn’t one. But there was a generation of absolutely amazing collectors who were focused on their collections in these years leading up to the art market downturn in the early 1990s. That downturn became an amazing buying opportunity for collectors such as Eli Broad, Norman Braman, and Sam Heyman. They were buying with precision and with an eye for truly great works, and at that time, many were available at auction. Many of the sales were the result of distressed situations, which we don’t see nearly as much in today’s market.
But it wasn’t until the Ganz sale in 1997 that things really began to shift. I was part of the Christie’s Ganz team, and it was really the first time a collection was marketed in a concerted, cohesive manner. From
to
, it was really a collection of masterpieces. It set a new level of expectations for prices, and it also raised the stakes between the auction houses for the level of presentation, financial terms, and marketing that would need to be committed to clients in order to win coveted collections. That was really a turning point where it became almost an arms race for market share and prestige between Christie’s and Sotheby’s.
In the last 10 years, the story is really about the arrival of a deep pool of international collectors and the opening of new markets in Asia and, to some extent, in the Middle East. It began, for example, in Hong Kong sales, when we saw huge sums for porcelain and jade, but as the market expanded, many of these new collectors began to look at Western art and post-war American art as an important part of their overall collection. They are pursuing blue-chip modern and post-war works and are eager to understand how these works fit into the wider art historical context, and they care about the nuances of provenance and the stories of who owned these works and how it matters in terms of value and art history.
The Canvas: Going forward at least, the auction houses claim that they’re going to be far less interested in market share and are increasingly likely not to offer terms to clients that end up being unprofitable for the house solely in the interest of winning a prestigious trophy lot or gaining market share. Do you think that’s likely to be the case over the next few years?
L.P.: Personally, I’m doubtful. I mean, yes, it became so reckless in many ways that there had to be a bit of a pause to reassess and try to understand the market, but at the end of the day, when we’re sent consignment proposals and marketing materials on behalf of our estate clients, market share is always the metric that’s touted.
It’s interesting, because now that I’m on the other side, frankly, I realize how meaningless the concept of market share is to clients. What our clients care about is expertise and the time and willingness to put in the hard work necessary to maximize the value of their collections. An auction house may not be leading in market share one season, or perhaps it isn’t currently where an individual artist’s auction record was last set, but what is important is if the auction house will treat the collection with the highest level of respect and genuinely work to leverage its value in all ways possible.
The Canvas: What effect do you think third-party entities like AGP will have on major collections coming to market?
L.P.: I think every estate has specific needs that either can or can’t be met by certain entities in the market. For instance, I just worked with the Friday Foundation on the collection of Jane Lang Davis and Richard E. Lang. Because there were certain philanthropic components to the estate, that was not a situation where a collection could be bought outright, as was the case with the Marron collection.
However, I think for certain estates, where families just want to say “we’re out” and prefer not to be as involved, those kinds of third-party options can make sense. The Marron Collection was almost entirely post-war and 20th-century artists, and there was no furniture or other extraneous collecting categories. So, in that capacity, they met the client’s needs. However, in many estates, the collections include works from a range of genres and categories. In those cases, clearly an auction house would be a preferable alternative. So, again, each collection and estate has its own individual needs. But in Marron’s case, I think it worked out really well, and generally speaking, I think it’s important to have an alternative in the market. It makes everyone work a little bit harder.
The Canvas: Okay, so this will be the last question I pepper you with on this topic. To me, it seems like there has never been a better time to be in the business of advising truly significant/major collections. The auction houses and galleries are competing with each other for this business. In recent years, the auction houses have increased their buyer’s premium for top lots, at least partly to account for the compensation of outside advisors to said collections. And because of the increasing amount of concentrated wealth, there are more and more of these types of collections to advise. So, from your perspective, at the end of the day, brass tacks, what are most of these estates and collections looking for when it comes to determining where to consign their works (either privately or at auction)? And are the current options in the market currently satisfying those needs?
L.P.: First, regardless of how prepared you are, when faced with an estate collection that needs to be managed, it is going to be a challenge. Even for the most organized of people, the process is complicated and often emotional. You try to troubleshoot as much as you can beforehand, but you can never fully prepare for managing the family dynamics surrounding an estate.
At the end of the day, the clients themselves feel relieved knowing that the job will be done, it’ll be done well, and it will be done with a smart and strong financial return in mind. However, what is most important to families and advisors, and the lawyers representing the estates, is efficiency and maximized returns. If it’s important to tell a story, they want it to be told well, and they want to be sure the family dynamics will be managed and that all parties are working together. And I also believe they’re looking for expertise, very often with a depth of knowledge in one or two specific artists who are particularly represented in the collection. For example, with the Bergman Collection, there were nearly 50 works by
, and expertise and an understanding of the artist within the full spectrum of his work and how to sell it was critical to winning the collection.
One of the last things I worked on before I left Christie’s was the great collector and philanthropist Melva Bucksbaum’s collection. We had 1,500 works on a computer spreadsheet, and I sat with everyone in a room and said, “Okay, this is not going to be fun, but we’re going to go through every one of these works and decide where it’s going to be sold, how it’s going to be sold, and determine how it fits into a view of the overall collection.” I have the patience to do that because I’m interested in the full texture of the collection itself. It’s how you develop advocacy for the complete collection. I knew Melva, adored her, and I wanted us to do a great job for her legacy. However, there isn’t a lot of reward in the auction houses these days for that roll-up-your-sleeves, get-to-work mentality, even though that personal investment remains so important to the clients and to winning business.
The Canvas: I know that especially since bringing Michael and Bernie into the company, Gagosian Advisory works with a number of younger collectors. And I think it’s fair to say that particularly during this past year of the pandemic, young collectors have proven especially comfortable spending increasingly large sums on building out their collections even if it means they can’t see the work in person beforehand. What do you see young collectors gravitating towards for their collections?