Christie’s Launches Global Pop Culture Division: Film, Music and Memorabilia Auctions After Record $105.3M Jim Irsay Collection Sale

Christie’s, one of the world’s oldest auction houses, has announced the opening of a new global division dedicated to pop culture, with a series of auctions to be held several times a year. The news was delivered by CEO Bonnie Brennan on Wednesday during Puck’s “Art of Influence” conference in New York, in a conversation with Marion Maneker.

The division will cover a wide range of categories: film, television, music, sports memorabilia, science, technology, natural history, fashion and popular design. The global head of the new unit is Josh Benesh, based in New York. Benesh comes after five years as strategy head and legal counsel at Heritage Auctions and joined Christie’s this year as a consultant before taking over the division.

The spark for creating the division was the extraordinary sale of the collection of the late businessman Jim Irsay: 404 objects in 5 auctions this year, totaling $105.3 million — the highest sum ever achieved for a memorabilia collection. Among the highlights were presidential documents, the original typescript of Jack Kerouac’s novel “On the Road,” David Gilmour’s “Black Strat” guitar which sold for $14.5 million (the most expensive guitar ever sold at auction), Jerry Garcia’s “Tiger” guitar and Kurt Cobain’s Fender Mustang from the “Smells Like Teen Spirit” video. The first four March auctions alone brought in $94.5 million, with 100% of objects sold and 28 auction records.

“We’ve been testing this market… it has now reached a maturity that makes us invest seriously,” Brennan said at the conference, recalling the atmosphere of the Irsay sale, where buyers congratulated and hugged each other: “There was no better example of how the auction creates community.” Christie’s has previously sold the collections of Elizabeth Taylor, Audrey Hepburn, Elton John, George Michael, Mark Knopfler and David Gilmour, but now competes in a field where rivals moved earlier: Sotheby’s created its Science and Pop Culture department in 2021, Bonhams holds dedicated memorabilia sales, Freeman’s has a collectors department and Heritage Auctions built an entire collectors business.

The strategy aims to attract new and younger-generation collectors — an issue Brennan called “existential” for the 260-year-old house: “If we don’t invite people in, if we don’t make the next generation feel that Christie’s is the place for them, we die.” According to the house’s data, 75% of bids in Christie’s luxury auctions now come through online platforms. “Collectors rarely limit themselves to one category… our art clients are just as enthusiastic about these opportunities,” Benesh said. The interest is real: the 2019 sale of Gilmour’s guitars “crashed” Christie’s online system — “There is real demand out there, and we have to respond to it.”

Source: ARTnews (via USA Art News)