Totals at Regional Auction Houses Show Strength
It is easy to look at Christie’s February report that it had a company record $5.7 billion in sales in 2011 and Sotheby’s report of $5.8 billion in sales and think that all the action is taking place at just a few auction houses and in a few locations. In fact, the party is also going on at a number of regional auctioneers around the country and may indicate the growing strength of the art market, matching and in some cases exceeding the go-go period up to 2007.
Los Angeles Modern Auctions, for instance, earned “$8.5 million in sales in 2011, nearly doubling the previous record of $4.5 million set in 2008,” according to Elizabeth Portanova, a spokeswoman for the 20-year-old auction house. She claimed that years of marketing its specialized niche in 20th-century art and design have led to more buyers and sellers who know and trust its brand. “People are consigning to us more and more valuable and rare pieces,” she noted, adding that fine art auctions have come to dominate its business in terms of the proportion and value of its sales.
Auction sales last year at LAMA generated record prices for a work in Robert Rauschenberg’s mounted color lithograph series “Sling Shots Lit,” which brought $68,750 (est. $30,000/ 50,000), and for artist Reg Butler for his 1952-53 maquette The Unknown Political Prisoner, which sold for $125,000 (est. $20,000/ 30,000).
At Shannon’s Fine Art Auctioneers in Milford, Connecticut, now in its 15th year, 2011 was also its best year, earning $7.6 million, ahead of 2010’s $7 million and 2007’s $7.2 million, according to owner Gene Shannon. He credited the strong year to the April 2011 American and European art auction, which contained a number of Pop Art pieces consigned from a nonprofit organization that “brought in a lot of people who were unknown to us, and we were unknown to them.” These new buyers helped the sale earn $5.1 million.
Among the notable sales in that April auction were a 1965 color screenprint by Roy Lich-tenstein that sold for $120,000 (est. $40,000/60,000), and Marisol Escobar’s Zoot, an undated painted wood sculpture that sold for $92,200 (est. $40,000/60,000).
The still uncertain economy has actually helped matters, Shannon stated, since “people have money and need to park it somewhere” until bank interest rates improve and the stock market provides steadier rates of return. “I’ve had a few buyers tell me that their financial advisors are telling them to put ten percent of their assets in art.”
Dallas-based Heritage Auctions also has seen “a big desire to invest wealth into tangible assets,” according to a spokesman, who noted that 2011 was the auction house’s best ever year, earning just over $806 million, a 19% increase over 2010’s $677 million and 10% higher than Heritage’s previous best, $727 million in 2009. Increases in earnings were “spread evenly across the categories,” he said, including jewelry ($17.4 million, more than double 2010’s record year); international coins ($39.45 million, a 60% jump over 2010’s record year); decorative arts and silver ($7.43 million, doubling its previous best); weekly U.S. coin Internet-only auctions ($22 million, a record total and an 80% increase over 2010); and showroom U.S. coin auctions ($5,340,889, a record total and a 70% increase over 2010).
The good times were evident at Skinner in Boston and at Doyle New York. Skinner’s 2011 was its “strongest year ever,” according to a spokeswoman, with a 7% increase over 2010 and a 4% net increase over 2007, the company’s previous best year.
Among the year’s sales highlights was a 1786 painting of 14-year-old Abigail Rose that sold for $1,271,000 (est. $150,000/ 250,000) in November 2011, setting a new record for American folk art portraiture at an American furniture and decorative arts sale. A June 2011 sale of Asian works of art that earned $6.1 million (with 94% of the 1748 lots finding buyers) was Skinner’s second-highest-grossing sale in its 40-year history. Every department had a strong showing, but leading the pack was jewelry, attributed in part to the price increases in the metals market.
At Doyle New York, sales increased 27% in 2011 over 2010, which had been the auction house’s best year to date, according to senior vice-president Louis Webre, who stated that the auction house does not publicly release its corporate revenues. Just as at Skinner, jewelry was the auction house’s leading category. “It was unbelievably strong; I’d call it recession-proof.” But another reason for the stronger earnings was the increase in buying by Chinese collectors for Asian and other higher-end works of art. “It is a challenge for collectors from other parts of the world to compete with the sheer number and deep pockets of Chinese collectors,” Webre said.
Like Skinner and Doyle New York, Leslie Hindman Auctioneers in Chicago doesn’t release its yearly totals, although company president Leslie Hindman said that the auction house earned “in excess of $40 million,” which was a 72.4% increase over 2010, making 2011 its best year. She also credited the “huge increase” in Asian buyers as leading to more bidding and higher prices. Hindman has reached new buyers and consignors in the U.S. as a result of the auction house’s establishing sales offices within the past few years in Florida (Naples and Palm Beach), Denver, and Milwaukee. “We’re getting better and better property, and our gross totals are reflecting that.”
At Grogan & Company, Dedham, Massachusetts, auction house president Michael Grogan reported a strong 2011 ($6.2 million, well ahead of 2010’s $4 million—”I can’t remember the 1990’s, but 2011 was certainly our best year in a long time, if not ever”). He claimed that was attributable not as much to investors needing a place to park their money or to an influx of Asian collectors as to “the fact that Christie’s and Sotheby’s keep raising the bar. People tell us that the message they get from Christie’s and Sotheby’s is they don’t want items under ten thousand dollars. Our wheelhouse, our average price per lot, is two thousand dollars.” As a result, Grogan & Company sold more lots (2800 in 2011 compared to 2600 in 2010) and more expensive lots that the largest auction houses didn’t want to handle.
Grogan noted that Christie’s and Sotheby’s have helped him and other regional auctioneers in another way. “They’ve done a very good job of promoting themselves at the top end, for being transparent and an easy way to sell and getting good prices, and that has helped us at our end too. More product is coming through us that might have gone to art and antiques galleries.”
Not every auction house had uniformly stronger sales in 2011, and some continued to struggle. Daile Kaplan, director of photographs and photo books at Swann Galleries in New York City, noted that photography has become “a crowded marketplace” and that what she described as the “middle market” is “in flux.” She noted, however, that sales have been “more robust” in the past year, which “corresponds to the economy or the perception of the economy, and also the art market’s relationship to the equity markets.”
In the photography market, Kaplan claimed, “The past few sales realized more world-auction records than during any prior season.” The sale of Andrew J. Russell’s 107-photograph album of Civil War images in December 2011 brought $156,000 (est. $50,000/ 75,000), making it the photography department’s top lot of the year. In October 2011, a 1982 retrospective portfolio of 50 black-and-white prints by Berenice Abbott earned $90,000 (est. $90,000/120,000), which set a world record for this portfolio, and a record price of $66,000 (est. $14,000/18,000) was paid for Edward Curtis’s 1906 orotone Canyon del Muerto. Still, in that October sale, only 38% of the 327 lots found buyers, and the auction earned just over $1.2 million, which was below the presale estimate.