Auction House Lineup Changes

Given that the season is just getting started, we haven't been paying too much attention to the auction houses during the past few months. In gathering some information for a roundup of the photography being offered in the London Contemporary Art sales (which we'll post later today), we saw that both Christie's and Phillips had made some changes to their specialist teams (there have been no changes at Sotheby's or Swann that we can discern). These kinds of changes don't tend to be trumpeted in press releases, but are actually meaningful for collectors.

At Christie's, Matthieu Humery is no longer on the team. (UPDATE: according to Christie's, apparently I was wrong about this; Humery is still on the team but somehow fell off the website, which will be fixed soon. My apologies for the confusion.) Jamie Krass appears to have slid over and joined the Photographs department, with a dual title including 20th Century Art (which isn't actually a department, so I'm not entirely sure what that means). This leaves the Christie's Photography department as follows:

London
Phillippe Garner
Yuka Yamaji
Penelope Malakates

New York
Joshua Holdeman
Jamie Krass
Matthieu Humery
Stuart Alexander
Laura Paterson
Sarah Shepard

At Phillips, both New York director Joseph Kraeutler and London director Genevieve Janvrin are gone. Kelly Padden is a new addition to the London team. Charlie Scheips is now in charge of the entire department. The smaller Phillips Photography team is therefore the following:

Charlie Scheips
Vanessa Kramer
Kelly Padden

As collectors, continuity of the specialists at an auction house means we can develop more personal relationships, making it easier and more fun to benefit from their knowledge and expertise. While we didn't have interaction with everyone who is now gone, we are particularly sorry to see Genny Janvrin go, as she helped us many times over the years, was friendly and responsive to our questions and requests for condition reports, and was an early supporter of our efforts on this blog. We wish her well in whatever her next steps may be.

ANOTHER UPDATE: I have been reminded that for the sake of completeness, I should probably note that Andra Russek left Sotheby's last year to work freelance and to collaborate with her parents, the dealers Scheinbaum & Russek in New Mexico. Since then, Lauren Mang has joined the Sotheby's team, and she actually helped me look at some prints last season.