From Private Hands to Public Collections: Sotheby's and the Museums

A uctions are pure drama, but not just because of the bobbing auctioneer and the shouting of competing bids – they are spectacular events because they present the rare opportunity to actually acquire museum-quality works of art, and so there is a lot at stake. Proportionally, almost all of the most admired and beautiful artworks that have ever been made are already in the collections of museums, who will then seldom let them go, or they belong to discreet private collectors. The number of precious pieces that actually move hands is miniscule, and so when this happens in a public auction, everyone pays attention, including the world’s most important museums and art galleries. This is as true for Furniture and Decorative Arts as in other categories, since the finest pieces of historical craftsmanship and those with significant provenance are so limited in number. Fierce bidding often comes from curators at public museums who have identified the perfect acquisition for their collections, which makes auctions at Sotheby’s important cultural events not just for wealthy individuals, but the collections on display for all of the general public to enjoy. Every major Sotheby’s auction is monitored by curators, and even to give examples in the last couple of years, the Gilbert Collection has acquired a hardstone table by Giacomo Raffaelli from a Treasures auction in London and American museums acquired major Italian decorative art at the recent sale of the Giordano collection in Paris.

When auctions take place in France, sometimes the falling of the hammer is immediately followed by an announcement that the lot has been ‘pre-empted’ – this means that a public cultural institution will replace the winning bidder, paying the full hammer price that was offered and acquiring the piece instead for its own collection. This practice is the means by which French cultural institutions expand their collections through the open art market, and was frequently enacted in the auctions of the historically significant contents of the Hôtel Lambert held at Sotheby’s Paris in October 2022. From the Sotheby’s galleries, several pieces went to take up residence at the most significant historical palace in France, the Palace of Versailles: two Boulle pedestals from 1684 can now be seen in the Salon de l'Abondance (V.2022.45.1 and V.2022.45.2), while a table by Weisweiler is now in the boudoir of the Queen’s private apartments (V.2022.46). Those are only two of the numerous acquisitions by Versailles, but they were not the only major player exercising the right of pre-emption in the Lambert auctions: the Mobilier national, the body that holds the state collections of furniture and furnishes official buildings like the Élysée Palace, acquired a rare Savonnerie carpet for Louis XIV’s Grande Galerie, while the Sèvres Factory and National Museum used the opportunity to acquire a superb Nevers faience vase with gilt-bronze mounts (2022.6.1).

In other countries, museums and galleries register as regular bidders in auctions, making it less immediately apparent when they have made an acquisition. However, as public bodies they often disclose and even report widely on their important acquisitions, and major purchases are usually added to the permanent displays soon afterwards – a stroll through the V&A’s ‘Europe 1600-1815’ galleries will take you past numerous prestige pieces that came there via Sotheby’s, including a silver-mounted Egyptomania medal cabinet that came to auction in 2013 (W.8:1,2-2014). Other than the V&A, one of the most significant acquisitions for a UK institution was the purchase of a pair of 17th-century Italian cabinets from Castle Howard, which sold for over £1.2 million and now take pride of place in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge (M.12 & A-2016 and M.13 & A-2016). Museums across the world, too, have kept their eyes on our Treasures sales in London and Paris, with New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art holding a pair of gilt-bronze candelabra that formerly belonged to the Dukes of Richmond and came to auction in 2016 (2016.618.1a–g, .2), while the Louvre also acquired a pair of mirrors from Stowe (OA 12318 1) in a 2010 Treasures auction – both museums have put these acquisitions on full public display for visitors to admire.

A particularly interesting case to close with would be the auction of the Oppenheimer collection at Sotheby’s New York in 2021, when public auction and museum acquisition came together within a longer narrative of restitution and justice. This collection of outstanding Meissen porcelain was created by Franz and Margarethe Oppenheimer during the inter-war period, but the couple were forced to flee Germany and then Austria on account of their Jewish origins, ending up in New York but leaving their porcelain behind. The collection was seized by the Nazis in 1941, and after the war was transferred to the Rijksmuseum. The Rijksmuseum restituted the collection to the heirs of the Oppenheimers in 2021 and when the heirs put the pieces to auction, the Rijksmuseum then bought back many star lots: to give just two examples, the museum bought an ambitious early Meissen clock and a rare armorial tea service, with the bidding on both going over $1.3 million, and they are form items BK-17437 and BK-17421 in the collection. The Rijksmuseum’s recognition of the importance of these pieces within their collection, not just as exceptional pieces of 18th-century art but as artefacts that carry with them Europe’s tumultuous 20th-century history, is a demonstration of the significant cultural role played by auctions at Sotheby’s: our salerooms across the world create a forum for both private collectors and prestigious institutions to access the extraordinary lots that make for unique, world-class and admirable collections.