Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, “Shark Tank” investor Kevin O’Leary and venture capitalist Vinod Khosla will convene in New York City this week for a technology-focused summit hosted not by an Internet giant but by Christie’s, the 258-year-old auction house.
Bonnie Brennan, Christie’s president of the Americas, told the Post that having some of the biggest names in AI and technology spending a week at Christie’s Rockefeller Center headquarters is a sign of the company repositioning itself.
Sure, Christie’s is known for selling iconic works like Leonardo da Vinci’s $450 million “Salvador Mundi,” but the firm has also branched out into digital art, investing in holograms and artificial intelligence.
“We want to preserve tradition, but Christie’s is really focused on technology,” Brennan said, sitting in front of works by sculptor Claes Oldenburg and painter Ludwig Sander. “We have to keep moving forward.”
Brennan acknowledges the importance of being “thoughtful and insightful,” but also feels the world is “advancing so quickly that it’s become a kind of race.”
Its eighth annual Art + Tech Summit, taking place this week, will have AI as a major focus, presenting Christie’s with an opportunity to stay ahead of the competition.
In 2021, it became the first major auction house to sell an NFT by artist Beeple, fetching $69 million. (Beeple will be attending the summit this week.) In 2018, Christie’s sold an AI-generated work by Edmond de Bellamy for $432,000.
“We’re just responding to people and giving them what they want,” Brennan said. “People collect differently than they did 50 years ago. If you’d told me 30 years ago there would be a handbag department, I might have resisted a little.”
“I think people have a completely different idea of what they want and how they want to interact with art. [than before]”Not just hanging things on the walls, but also storing things in closets and storing sneakers in cases.”
Though NFTs have slumped since the 2021 auctions, Christie’s is still betting on digital images. “We see a long-term future in the world of NFTs and digital art,” Brennan said. “It’s a long-term commitment for us, and of course there will be ups and downs along the way.”
“There’s a strong curiosity about digital art among younger collectors, but also among more established collectors. We’re seeing a real crossover, which is great.”
And many buyers of both digital and physical art are doing so online. That changed dramatically during the pandemic lockdowns, when auction houses saw online bids jump from less than 50% to more than 80%. (Christie’s held its first online art auction in 2011.)
In 2022, Christie’s hired former Microsoft executive Devan Tucker to launch a ventures division that will invest in and create new technologies rather than simply adopt them.
This story is part of “NYNext,” a new editorial series showcasing innovations and those leading the way across industries in New York City.
Last year, Christie’s invested in hologram company Proto, which will see a hologram of Elton John greet guests. Art, fashion and other items were auctioned off in February.
And Brennan himself used the technology to “appear” at a conference in Los Angeles.
It has also enabled Christie’s to virtually exhibit artworks around the country, such as a hologram of Edgar Degas’ “14-Year-Old Dancer” in San Francisco. “The technology is so good that some customers have said they thought they were actually seeing the artwork,” Brennan added.
But she remains bullish on the brick-and-mortar world, particularly New York, which accounts for 48% of the company’s global sales.
“This really is the perfect global center, and it’s wonderful to have the dialogue with museums and galleries here,” Brennan said. “We’re a small piece of a much larger art ecosystem that continues to grow. [and] It continues to expand to all boroughs.”
The Rockefeller Center showroom has Christie’s newest exhibit taking up the main exhibition space: Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s collection of objects representing some of the most significant moments in recent tech history.
The “Gen One” collection includes the 1976 Apple-1 personal computer that was on Steve Jobs’ desk, a 1939 letter from Albert Einstein to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt warning about Germany’s development of a nuclear bomb, and the space suit designed in 1964 for the first American astronaut to walk in space.
“When you have something rare, it creates more demand and more bidders,” Brennan said, admiring Jobs’ computer. “It’s a piece of American history.”
