Following a wave of senior staff moves between Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips in the past year—one that had seemed to subside in recent months—Art Market Monitor’s Marion Maneker breaks the news that Brooke Lampley, Christie’s head of Impressionist and modern art, is leaving to join Sotheby’s in 2018.
Lampley, who joined Christie’s in 2005 and was appointed head of the New York evening sale in 2012, is one of the few women to ever occupy such a senior role in the auction house’s Impressionist and modern department.
Sotheby’s confirmed the move, noting that Lampley will join as vice chairman in the Fine Art Division.
In a statement emailed to artnet News, Jennifer Zatorski, president of specialist art departments at Christie’s, said: “We thank Brooke for her contribution to the company over 12 years in roles of increasing responsibility and leadership within our Impressionist and Modern Art department.” Zatorski noted that four people will be “sharing” her responsibilities from now on: Cyanne Chutkow, Conor Jordan, Sharon Kim, and Adrien Meyer.
Under Lampley’s leadership, auction revenues and sell-through rates surged; in 2015, New York’s Impressionist and modern sales alone represented over $1 billion of Christie’s gross revenues, according to the website.
“I started in the day where ‘poaching’ employees just didn’t happen,” said David Norman, former vice chairman of Sotheby’s and worldwide chairman of Impressionist and modern art, who left the firm earlier this year and now runs David Norman Fine Art. “I think it’s great for many talented people like Brooke to have more options,” Norman added.
She has worked in the curatorial departments of museums including the Fogg, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, and the National Gallery of Art, in Washington, DC.
Lampley “has secured a wide array of important consignments…ranging from the collection of Johnny Depp sold in London in June 2016, to the estates of Edgar Bronfman, Huguette Clark, Ethel Allen, and Wassily Kandinsky’s Studie für Improvisation 8, from the Volkart Foundation, which realized $23 million,” in November 2012, a record for the artist at auction (It was exceeded this past fall by the $23.3 million price paid for Rigide et courbé (1935), at Christie’s Impressionist evening sale).