Biography
Oliver Barker is Chairman of Sotheby’s Europe, a Senior International Specialist of Contemporary Art and Sotheby’s Principal Auctioneer. Oliver has over three decades of industry experience, having joined Sotheby’s in 1994.
As an auctioneer, Oliver has overseen numerous market-defining sales, beginning with the landmark sale of the contents of Damien Hirst’s restaurant Pharmacy in 2004. Four years later he went on to bring works to auction directly from the artist’s studio for the landmark Hirst sale Beautiful Inside My Head Forever, which achieved £111.5 million – a world record for a single-artist sale – just one day after Lehman Brothers’ collapsed.
Oliver has taken to the rostrum to auction some of the greatest collections ever to come to the market, including ‘white glove’ sales of luminaries such as David Bowie (2016), whose never-before-seen art collection attracted 1,750 bidders and, more recently, the record-breaking Freddie Mercury: A World of His Own sale series (2023), which brought over 150,000 visitors to Sotheby’s in London. Oliver has been instrumental in other major collections such as the ‘white glove’ sales of Picasso Masterworks (2021), The Macklowe Collection (2022) and The David M. Solinger Collection (2022).
Oliver has also presided over some of the art world’s most viral moments, including the now legendary sale of ‘the’ Banksy – retrospectively titled Love is in the Bin – which caught the imagination of the world when it was shredded by the artist at the moment the canvas hammered for £1.04 million in 2018. And in 2024, he was again at the rostrum for the record-breaking sale of Maurizio Cattelan’s The Comedian – the now famous ‘$6 million banana’.
Oliver studied History of Art at Manchester University and the Courtauld Institute of Art, where he now sits on the Courtauld Campaign Board. Oliver is also on the Arts Commission Committee for the Imperial War Museum, and is Co-Chair of the Sotheby’s Chairmen’s Committee. Oliver has also taken numerous charity auctions, including the $40 million (RED) Auction, a major sale arranged by Bono and Damien Hirst to raise money for the United Nations Foundation to support HIV/AIDS relief programs in Africa.
Read Less