For some, autumn is back-to-school season. For those of us fixated on the art market, it’s back-to-the-action-house season, with dozens of high-profile art sales spanning multiple continents. Of course, while we’ve had a few art fairs to gauge the current mood, no one ever really knows what’s real or what’s stage-managed by savvy intermediaries, some of whom hold the announcement of private sales in order to massage the market narrative. Especially in these lower-value mid-season sales, the numbers are much harder to analyze. Still, the sales offer some useful directional information. So let’s take a closer look.
Christie’s announced last week that it had secured 20 works from the collection of Laura Lee Brown and Steve Wilson for its fall sales. Brown and Wilson are best known as the hoteliers behind the 21c Museum Hotels group, a chain of boutique “art hotels” in cities like Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Bentonville, Kansas City, Louisville, Lexington, and Durham. Perhaps more pertinently, Brown is an heiress to the Jack Daniel’s liquor fortune who, along with her husband, has poured millions of dollars into the couple’s collection of sculpture, photography, and video and installation works—particularly by artists of color and women—much of which is not market-friendly.
