Biography
Brooke M. Lampley is Global Chairman and Head of Global Fine Art at Sotheby’s. She is responsible for overseeing the global team of specialists — across auction, private sales, online sales, and marketplace channels — for the Contemporary, Modern, Old Masters, Chinese, American, Latin American, Modern British, Photographs, 20th Century Design, Art & Objects, and Prints departments. In addition to directing strategy and management across all Global Fine Art departments and sales channels, she also works regularly with the world's leading collectors and collections as a worldwide authority in modern masterpieces.
Brooke has secured numerous high-profile consignments and driven landmark prices in a variety of selling categories from contemporary and modern art to jewelry and design. She was at the helm of the restructuring of the Global Fine Arts specialist teams, harnessing cross-category integration and also led the reinvention of Contemporary and Modern marquee sale weeks globally, including the unveiling of The Now sale.
The global team has grown Sotheby’s physical and digital presence under her leadership with new private sales galleries and expanded online sales offerings, and is at the vanguard of innovating ways to reach the widest possible global audience and improve the overall client experience for buying art. Widely sought-after as an art-world commentator, Brooke is valued for her insights on the rapidly evolving global art market and trends. She has been a regular contributor to broadcast television shows such as NBC’s The Today Show, CNBC, Fox Business and Bloomberg, in addition to various print media.
Brooke’s achievements at Sotheby’s have brought the company several record-breaking consignments and sales. Most recently, she was instrumental in bringing to market the Emily Fisher Landau Collection, resulting in a white glove evening sale that broke the record for the most valuable sale devoted to a female collector in auction history. Brooke also placed the winning bid on the sale’s star lot, Picasso’s Femme à la montre, which achieved the second highest result for Picasso at auction. She previously played a pivotal role in securing the sale of the Macklowe Collection — at the time the most valuable collection ever sold at auction. Concurrently, she led the Global Fine Arts team, resulting in Sotheby’s’ achievement of $7.4 billion in total sales in 2021, an all-time record for the company.
Prior to joining Sotheby’s in January 2018, Brooke led the Impressionist and Modern Art team at Christie’s, where she served as Head of Department from 2012 and Specialist since 2005. She previously worked in curatorial departments at The National Gallery of Art and The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, each at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., and The Fogg Art Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She holds a Master of Arts degree in History of Art from Yale University and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Literature and History of Art from Harvard College. She lives in New York City with her husband and two sons.
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