Two of Phillips public sale home’s prime dealmakers are to step down and depart the public sale trade in what some commerce insiders are calling a tectonic shift out there.
Cheyenne Westphal, who has held the place of world chairwoman at Phillips for eight years, is leaving to pursue a “new chapter” working straight with personal collectors and artists. Jean-Paul Engelen, who joined the public sale home in 2015 and was appointed president within the Americas in 2022, is taking over a brand new function at Acquavella Galleries in New York.
The departures come simply months after Ed Dolman resigned as govt chairman in December. Dolman, who joined Phillips as chief govt in 2014 and was promoted in 2021, leaves the public sale home this month for his newly created consultancy function. The agency’s deputy chief govt Amanda Lo Iacono additionally stepped down on the finish of final 12 months to pursue different alternatives.
Engelen and Westphal, who each have deep relationships within the blue-chip and fewer established up to date artwork markets, have been key to increasing Phillips’s remit and measurement over the previous decade. “Jean-Paul has been instrumental in Phillips’s development and success since becoming a member of the agency in 2015,” Stephen Brooks, the agency’s former chief govt officer, mentioned in 2022 on the time of Engelen’s promotion. Brooks left the public sale home in 2024 for private causes.
Dubbed probably the most highly effective lady in up to date artwork, Westphal was recruited from Sotheby’s in 2016. On the time Dolman described her as “regarded by many as one of the best within the enterprise”. She got here to Phillips having overseen each main up to date artwork sale at Sotheby’s in Europe since 1999 and helped orchestrate the unprecedented 2008 Damien Hirst public sale, Stunning Inside My Head Perpetually, which fetched £121m whilst Lehmann Brothers collapsed. At Phillips, Westphal has overseen each main sale since she arrived and has secured main consignments. She has had specific success out there for Gerhard Richter.
Following the 2008 international monetary disaster, the artwork market bounced again comparatively rapidly—however the present downturn has been extra protracted. The public sale homes have been significantly exhausting hit, with gross sales values down final 12 months by 20%, based on the most recent Artwork Basel/UBS Artwork Market Report. The once-booming up to date sector was hit exhausting, with gross sales at public sale dropping by 36% to $1.4bn, their lowest stage since 2018. At Phillips final 12 months, public sale income was down 14%.
Describing the artwork market as “an ever-changing trade”, Westphal tells The Artwork Newspaper she now plans to arrange her personal enterprise, one thing she thought of when she left Sotheby’s. On the time she was persuaded by a sure momentum, in addition to potential, at Phillips. Her resolution, she provides, was unrelated to different departures on the public sale home. “That is how I wish to spend the subsequent part of my skilled life,” she says.
As for a way Westphal sees the market growing, she observes that some collectors now desire to promote privately moderately than at public public sale—a standard phenomenon in a bear market. “Now we have seen an infinite improve in personal gross sales,” she says, including: “I look ahead to being on the forefront of the artwork market’s subsequent evolution.”
The brand new guard
Taking the reigns at Phillips are Robert Manley, who has been promoted to chairman of Fashionable and up to date artwork, and Miety Heiden, who takes on the function of chairman of personal gross sales. Manley joined Phillips in 2016 as a senior specialist and rapidly moved as much as the function of deputy chairman and worldwide co-head of Fashionable and up to date artwork. He has been instrumental in consigning the Pop artwork assortment of Miles and Shirley Fiterman, amongst others. Heiden joined the agency’s personal gross sales division in 2017; throughout her tenure, annual personal gross sales on the public sale home have elevated in worth by 46%.
Martin Wilson, Phillips’s new chief govt officer, says in a press release that he has “little question” that Manley and Heiden “will proceed to drive excellence with the professionalism, integrity, and enthusiasm”. He provides: “Along with Jonathan Crockett, chairman in Asia, they characterize a united management workforce with distinctive attain throughout key markets.”
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