Last week, as Damien Hirst’s end run around the gallery system—an auction of more than 200 of his latest so-called artworks at Sotheby’s in London—had many in the international art world quaking in their Guccis, a much smaller experiment with a potentially bigger local impact was taking place in Chicago. For the first time in her 30 years in the business, auctioneer Leslie Hindman was putting a group of pieces on the block in a distinct category she called Made in Chicago. “There hasn’t been a strong identity for Chicago work in the secondary market,” Hindman said just before the auction in her new headquarters at 1338 W. Lake. “We want to build it. However things go today, this is a beginning.”
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Nothing in Made in Chicago went at those prices, but Hindman devoted 36 pages to it in her printed catalog (viewable at lesliehindman.com) and tried to seed interest with a lunch for local collectors of Chicago artists at the Arts Club several weeks before the sale. She says the collectors were enthusiastic. Dealers might not be expected to feel the same about auction houses moving into gallery territory, but the reaction from those I spoke with boils down to “the more interest in the work, the better for everyone.”
The pace was rapid. An initial group of 63 lots of post-World War II and contemporary work was dispatched in less than a minute per item. Blink and you could miss a Bob Thompson painting change hands for $20,000 or a Harry Bertoia sculpture move for $40,000.
Hindman says she’ll conduct another Made in Chicago auction on May 3. Next week—September 21 and 22—her gavel will be coming down on vintage couture, jewelry, and watches.
Kurtz says she’ll be checking out Chicago Opera Theater, which has sold half-price tickets and subscriptions to anyone under the age of 18, as well as to full-time college students, for a decade. Last spring COT also started offering $15 rush tickets—available a few days before the performance and announced by e-mail—to the college contingent. According to a COT spokesperson, they’re going to make the $15 seats available to younger students too.
