Hello Romain, after a Professional Master in Art Market in 2014, you now work for the auction house Galartis in Lausanne in the Contemporary Art, Urban Art, Music Memorabilia and Exhibition departments.
How did you find this job and how did the program you took at IESA help you?
After my Professional Master in Art Market, Contemporary Art specialization, I was able to do an internship at this auction house / gallery thanks to IESA’s internship department, working with another alumnus of the school.
The program I took at IESA helped me through the courses, encounters and internships I had done, especially in the field of street art. I was thus able to set up an “Urban Art: Graffiti & Street Art” department and hold the first street art auction in Switzerland in June 2015 (followed by a second in December 2015), exhibit urban artists in our gallery (C215, Lek, Marko93, Fenx) and invite them to do performances (Clet, Cope2, Serval, NadaOne, etc.) in this country where everything remains to be done for this art movement.
Among this auction house’s many activities, you are organizing from July 2 to 9 an exhibition and auction as part of the 50th anniversary of the Montreux Jazz Festival. What will music lovers and art lovers find there?
To celebrate the anniversary of this cult festival, in partnership with the Claude Nobs Foundation we are organizing the first Music Memorabilia auction in Switzerland; we will exhibit the lots at the Montreux Casino, the festival’s historic venue, also known for its fire during a Frank Zappa concert that inspired Deep Purple’s famous song “Smoke on the Water.” There we will present Montreux Jazz Festival collectibles (posters, original drawings, programs, photographs…), followed by a section devoted to “Black Music” (Jazz, Blues, Soul) with concert posters, autographs of musicians (Quincy Jones, Miles Davis, James Brown, Louis Armstrong, Aretha Franklin…), photographs, vinyl records… And there is also the “Rock” session with collectibles (Elvis Presley’s firearms permit, stage costumes, instruments, posters, vinyl, signed items, jukebox…), and sections devoted to the Beatles (costumes, autographs, photographs…), the Rolling Stones (song manuscript, signed items, photographs…) and Jimi Hendrix (with the only known painting by the famous guitarist, personal items, and also a plaster cast made by the artist Cynthia Plaster Caster…). We will end this auction with the presentation of artworks created especially for this event by contemporary artists (Julian Opie, Laurence Jenkell, Philippe Geluck, Burton Morris, Greg Guillemin, C215…).
Today, with two years of hindsight, how do you judge the program you received at IESA?
Very career-oriented, and that is what is needed for the art market field, for me, having worn out university benches (law master’s, art history bachelor’s) for many years. I learned much more from the school’s practical teaching (encounters, curriculum, internships…), which still serves me today, as do the contacts we make at school (classmates, teachers, professionals, artists) and maintain once we enter the working world.