The Art of the Sale

interview by Barbara Stambaugh
photographs by Gabrielle Revere

Amy Todd Middleton '93 is the world marketing director for Sotheby's. That is to say, she sells high-end art to high-end clients.
But there's a lot more to her day at the office than marketing to the rich and famous–she actually gets to inspect and handle some of the world's most precious works. During a recent visit to campus, Middleton spoke with us about how a tough economy affects the art world, the difference between a 1940s Cartier piece and that old antique of Grandma's, and what it's like to touch the Magna Carta.

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What’s it like to work in a corporate culture with such a romantic history?

Having a storied and a venerable history can be a blessing and a curse. It’s mostly a blessing, because people associate trust, longevity, and expertise with our company. The problem is that sometimes you can get moored by that same venerable tradition and collapse under the weight of it. It’s important to celebrate your traditions and honor your heritage. At at the same time, we’re operating in a quickly changing world, and we need to be able to adapt to those changes. So that creates an interesting tension.

There are Sotheby’s auction houses in New York, London, Paris, Hong Kong, and Milan, and you’re trying to sell items in all of them. How much time do you spend on a plane every month?

A lot. Probably 20 hours. I’m traveling about one week out of every month.

Okay, so you’re at your office in London or New York–what might a typical day entail for you?

It’s a lot to grapple with, the things that fall in our universe– the Web site, Sotheby’s at Auction, all of our catalogs, the special events and sponsorships, design, external advertising. Like any job, some days the world explodes, and you find yourself reacting to 11 different things. And then there are days when everything works.

There’s a sale today–

In London. We have two sales, Italian contemporary and contemporary.

You’re visiting campus today, but is your head in England?

It’s interesting that you ask. We feature all of our live auctions on the Web and the simulcast wasn’t working this morning, so there was a little drama around getting the contemporary sale up and running. But it’s been resolved, so everybody can take a deep breath.

Are people doing more bidding and buying online and over the phone these days? Or do they still have to be in a room with a paddle?

We do have online bidding capabilities for some of our sales, but right now that’s reserved for wine and watches. We just had an amazingly successful wine sale in Hong Kong and 56 percent of the bidding came from the online feature. That’s pretty significant.