Sotheby's have just announced their deal to sell approximately $400 million worth of art from the estate of the late Leonard Lauder in New York’s November sales. So what does this mean, in general, and in particular?

Both Leonard and Ronald Lauder are desirable provenances in terms of quality—different from a Rockefeller provenance, but still top-notch. Is a $150 million+ Gustav Klimt what the 10 or so potential buyers want? Having a guarantee as a back stop will obviate the headline risk of not selling the top lot, like the ruckus following last season's unsold $70 million Alberto Giacometti sculpture. 

It appears the deal was signed with what is called a "house guarantee" which puts all the risk onto Sotheby’s (for now), who are seemingly in the midst of some financial challenges (for those of you who missed it, the recent New Yorker article on Sotheby’s owner Patrick Drahi is a good read). What the auction house is surely doing—and will continue to do until the sales kick off—is to try to offload their risk to third parties (along with some of the potential oversized gains). As time passes, the pressure to do so will increase—after all, small losses are a hell of a lot better than large ones.

Is this a smart move or not, counting on a correct read of the demand for these 55 works, or based on hope and luck? It's a risky play—but probably the best available move in a largely duopoly market with Christie's. And let’s be clear, the Lauder deal with Sotheby’s is about the last dollar for the heirs, not because of Sotheby’s new home in the storied Breuer Building, once home to the Whitney Museum who Lauder had a longstanding philanthropic relationship with—although that is a nice by-product.

Time will tell, because if we don't know the exact terms of each work sold we cannot independently 100% analyze. Speaking of transparency, Sotheby’s are one of the only auction houses that reveal the actual price paid (including fees) for a work that was financed, which definitely sheds more—but not all—light on the deals. Still, stay tuned.

The approximate number of artworks and antiquities seized by the Manhattan District Attorney's office over allegations of looting since 2017, according to Alexander Herman the director of the Institute of Art and Law. 

Although law enforcement and nonprofit organizations around the globe have been scrutinizing the provenance (aka ownership history) of cultural objects more closely than ever during this period, the Manhattan DA still stands out for its hawkishness. The office has proven as willing to confiscate suspected stolen pieces from leading New York museums—The Met has been raided multiple times—as from shady private dealers. Alvin Bragg, the current Manhattan DA, is even fighting to impound a 1916 Egon Schiele drawing owned by the Art Institute of Chicago on the grounds that it was briefly controlled by a Manhattan-based dealer between being looted by the Nazis in 1941 and sold to the museum in 1966. (The AIC is now appealing a New York State Supreme Court order to surrender the work, titled Russian War Prisoner, to Bragg’s office for restitution.)

It’s a tricky proposition to ballpark the size of the black market for stolen cultural objects. In 2020, UNESCO projected it to reach almost $10 billion annually, but many researchers and members of the trade have lambasted that figure as a gross overestimate built on phantom data. The vast majority of artworks and antiquities passing through New York have rock solid provenance records and thus nothing to fear from the DA. For any object with a questionable link in its chain of title, however, buyers and sellers alike would be wise to keep it off the island of Manhattan.

—Tim Schneider / The Gray Market

Eva from Los Angeles ASKed: What do you think is the most overlooked factor in building a sustainable career for an artist today?

Coen Young for No Reserve: I don’t think a simple, single answer, but as a young artist, I’ve seen within my community (and from personal experience), how difficult it can be to navigate scaling one's practice to accommodate the demands of the market and institutions, and to maintain a presence amidst the sheer volume of ideas being circulated. The ability to scale is not necessarily an inherent skill, desire or obligation for an artist, and it's often overlooked in education, which is why it's so important for galleries to be a kind of filter or defender, and to work with artist's to develop sustainable strategies and provide guidance that balances growth with feasibility, and why it's important for young artists to not be afraid to ask for help. Art at its core is about belief—in something, anything—so as I see it, the risk of working unsustainably without support is burnout = apathy = nihilism = the antithesis to what art is really about.

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