Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in On Balance, the ARTnews newsletter about the art market and beyond. Sign up here to receive it every Wednesday.
Exactly two weeks ago, 25-year-old Brian Beccafico announced in all caps on Twitter that he was “LEAVING SOTHEBY’S.” While the announcement strained decorum for an auction house, it made sense for the NFT specialist, who had been at the auction house for a little less than a year. The Web3 community lives on Twitter. He had to let them know.
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As Beccafico told ARTnews, Sotheby’s informed him in mid-June that it would no longer be holding NFT sales in Paris, making his position obsolete. But it’s now clear that he was far from the only employee at the auction house to get the axe.
Though the details remain hazy, two former Sotheby’s employees told ARTnews that at least 10 senior employees have been laid off since April, and over the last year, at least four staffers from Sotheby’s Metaverse and other related NFT sales, including another NFT specialist, have left the company. Those losses reduced Sotheby’s NFT-related workforce by half, apparently leaving only three staff members working on NFT sales: Michael Bouhanna, vice-president, contemporary art specialist and head of digital art and NFTs; Davis Brown, a presale coordinator; and another staffer. One source indicated that as many as 10 staffers were let go in the Paris office alone.
Those senior staffers laid off, according to sources, include Jamie Durkin, a general manager who worked at Sotheby’s for nearly 15 years, and at Sotheby’s Metaverse for nearly two; and Molly C. Berry, vice president and director of client experience, who started at Sotheby’s as an intern in 2004.
Neither Durkin nor Berry could be reached for comment at press time. Sotheby’s declined to comment about specific staffing changes, but a representative confirmed that there had been departures related to cost management and that some dedicated NFT support functions had been integrated into the larger business. The rep also noted that the company is actively recruiting for other roles in unspecified growth areas.
The apparent shrinking of Sotheby’s NFT ambitions comes at a turbulent time. Though crypto has lost nearly two-thirds of its value from its 2021 peak, the auction house held the successful Three Arrows Capital bankruptcy sale in mid-June, generating $11 million, or more than double the presale high estimate. Meanwhile, Sotheby’s just launched a new Gen Art program in partnership with Art Blocks, using a Dutch auction model; it’s set to kick off in the coming weeks with a series by computer art pioneer Vera Molnár.
Beccafico suggested that the Sotheby’s decision to pull back on NFTs in Paris was tied to new taxation rules and tightening regulations around crypto assets in France, which made the Paris office uncompetitive compared to those in New York or Hong Kong. However, he cautioned against thinking Sotheby’s was turning against NFTs altogether.
“The New York office is running at full speed with the Three Arrows Capital sale and the new Gen Art program,” Beccafico said. “But what I know is that they’ve been reducing head counts across all departments.”
The loss of senior staff like Durkin and Berry at Sotheby’s is harder to parse. Last month, the auction house purchased the iconic Breuer Building in New York from the Whitney Museum. Meanwhile, economists and major investors have been warning of an impending recession and there have been widespread layoffs across most major industries this year—usually blamed on high interest rates and inflation. The art world has not been immune with Masterworks and Artsy going through layoffs, among others.
On the auction side, the most recent sales weeks in New York and London seemed to indicate a softening of the market, with some going so far as to call it a “correction.” Christie’s 20th/21st Century evening sale in late June saw numerous blue-chip works sell at or below their presale low estimates, and the Phillips 20th Century to Now sale closed the London auction week by generating a mere $11.5 million. In that sale, 5 lots were withdrawn, 18 lots failed to generate a bid, and several top lots sold below their presale low estimate. However, Sotheby’s did set a European auction record in June, when Gustav Klimt’s Lady With a Fan (1917–18) sold for a final price of £85.3 million with buyer’s fees ($108.4 million). And, as reporter Daniel Cassady noted in On Balance last month, numerous ultra-contemporary works by hot artists on the block in London had estimates at or even magnitudes below sales prices for the same work at auction in years past.
Sotheby’s is not the only auction house to go through staffing changes. Phillips, which has headquarters in New York, London, and Hong Kong, recently shifted its West Coast strategy, opening a new location in Los Angeles last October. Earlier this month, the company eliminated two senior-level positions in San Francisco and Seattle overseeing Pacific Northwest clients. The company will now run its West Coast operations primarily from Los Angeles and “consolidate offices around major markets,” Silvia Coxe Waltner, Phillips former Pacific Northwest regional director and one of the two let go, said in a post on LinkedIn. (Waltner declined to speak with ARTnews.) A Phillips rep told ARTnews that the move was part of the company’s “recent consolidation” of its West Coast operations in Los Angeles.
Sources familiar with the company’s regional operations denied that the move signaled discord. A former Phillips employee told ARTnews that while “getting property was harder” ahead of the recent spring season—which generally means smaller sales—the impact business-wide wasn’t major. “Clients are above the fray,” the source said. A representative for Phillips declined to provide comment.
To put it bluntly, where there’s smoke, there’s usually fire.