THE AUCTION HOUSE PREVIEWS

The Auction House Previews is a morning in early May for twelve members, spent among the lots of the New York spring sales in the company of the specialist who catalogued them.

It exists so that a member watching the sales that week has already seen the lots as the specialist sees them.

The View

Every lot in a sale is first put on view. The houses hang their sales like exhibitions for a week or so beforehand, free to anyone who walks in from the street.

For many pictures it is the only public appearance they will make in years. They come from one private house and go to another, and the view is the interval.

In November 2017 Christie’s hung Leonardo’s Salvator Mundi at Rockefeller Center, and thousands queued to see it on the weekend before the sale. It sold for four hundred and fifty million dollars. It has not been shown in public since.

Nobody in that queue knew they were among the last to see it. At every view, somebody is.

The Morning

Twelve places, and one specialist.

The morning is spent at Christie’s in Rockefeller Center or at Sotheby’s on Madison Avenue, among the lots of the coming week, before the evening sales.

Pictures are taken down and turned over. The back of a canvas is where its history is written: the labels of exhibitions it has hung in, the stamps of dealers who have owned it, the seals of the borders it has crossed. A lamp is brought out to show where the surface has been mended.

What may be handled is handled. Members study what they will not bid for, which is most of it.

Lunch follows nearby, and the estimates are argued over.

What Is Asked

A lounge suit. The houses are places of business, and the morning is spent among people at work.

Touch nothing until it is offered. Gloves where they are given.

Ask for the condition report on anything that holds the eye. It costs nothing, and it is written by someone who has examined the thing closely.

What a member means to bid stays with the member. The Court bids for no one, and a member who wishes to bid registers with the house.

Photographs only where the house allows them.

The Places

Twelve. Any more and the specialist is giving a lecture rather than a morning.

Members are written to in March.

The sum is stated in the invitation and covers the whole of the morning, and lunch.

How one becomes a member is set out under Admission.