Art World Players Rethink the Auction Marketplace

Collectors have long enlisted dealers or auction houses to help resell their art holdings because such insiders typically have up-to-date pricing data and access to potential buyers. Now, in the latest challenge to the art world's status quo, a team led by former Sotheby's rainmaker Adam Chinn plans to launch a peer-to-peer digital marketplace later this month that will invite collectors to sell high-end art to each other, directly and anonymously. Listings in an early version of the site, called LiveArt Market, include an Andy Warhol "Rorschach" from 1984 valued around $200,000 and Jack Pierson's 2009 sign, "Glory," valued around $85,000. The move comes as all sorts of art-world players rethink the traditional ways art gets traded online, from former Christie's auctioneer Loïc Gouzer's Fair Warning auction app to the proliferation of digital platforms selling NFT artworks. Even as the art world's attention increasingly pivots back to in-person art events including fairs, online sales of luxury goods remain robust and some top industry dealmakers see a bigger market opportunity in finding fresh ways to sell art to collectors accustomed to shopping for art online.