ECR French Nineteenth-Century Art Network presents:

Between Public and Private: Auction Houses Beyond the Market  

Thursday 27 February 2025 1600 (GMT) // 1700 (CET) // 1100 (EST) // 0800 (PST)

  This panel aims to demystify the role of auction houses in the art-world ecosystem. Much more than just a marketplace for artworks, auction houses can also play a pivotal, if underrated, role in the shaping of museum collections and exhibitions, from acquisitions and deaccessions to exhibition checklist assistance with private collectors, and provenance research. This Network Session will share some behind the scenes insights that go beyond important sales and blockbuster prices to speak candidly about the relationship between the auction house, public institutions, private collectors, and the market. 

Kathryn Kemnitzer (Sotheby’s New York, 19th-Century European Paintings) will be joined by special guests to show how this dynamic relationship works in practice. 

More details of further speakers to follow shortly. 

Speaker Bios:

Kathryn Kremnitzer joined Sotheby’s in June 2021. She earned her PhD at Columbia University in 2020 with a dissertation that explored how Édouard Manet worked across media in the 1860s. She was previously Research Associate in the Painting and Sculpture of Europe department at the Art Institute of Chicago, where she worked on Manet and Modern Beauty (2019), Monet and Chicago (2020), and Cezanne (2022), and contributed to the online scholarly catalogue of Manet’s works in the collection. As a Curatorial Assistant at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, she worked on Madame Cézanne (2014) and Tiepolo Caricatures from the Robert Lehman Collection (2014). She specializes in 19th-century European painting, particularly French, and works on paper.