Visits to Auction Houses
Every Tuesday, 1st-year students in the Bachelor in Art Expertise and Art Trade go out to discover auction houses. It is a special moment for them, an opportunity to discover a place of sale and to have direct contact with artworks. These visits allow them to fully understand how public auctions work and to meet the professionals who take part in them.
On December 4, the visit took place at Sotheby’s, where Aurélie Vandevoorde, a specialist in the Impressionist and modern fields, passionately explained the historical interest of certain artworks in the sale, such as Wifredo Lam’s painting "Peinture, nous t’attendons," sold for €2,976,250.
On Tuesday, December 11, we were hosted by Catherine Heim at Artcurial, who walked us through the sale previews of Orientalist art, Furniture and Objets d’art, as well as books and manuscripts, alongside the specialists.
Thanks to its specialists from auction houses, our students in the Bachelor in Art Expertise and Art Trade discover the different fields that make up the public auction market, and above all learn to approach each object and artwork in terms of its stylistic, historical, and technical specificities, which give it its market value. They thus develop an eye that allows them to assess the importance of pieces and appraise them: essential foundations in the art trade and therefore in their Art Market and Expertise program.