After a $105 M. Memorabilia Blockbuster, Christie’s Launches a Pop Culture Division

After years of testing the waters, Christie’s has decided that pop culture is ready for the big leagues.

The auction house confirmed Wednesday that it is launching a dedicated pop culture division, a new global operation that will hold multiple auctions each year spanning film and television, music and musical instruments, sports memorabilia, science and technology, natural history, fashion, and popular design. Josh Benesh, a former Heritage Auctions executive who joined Christie’s as a consultant earlier this year, has been appointed to lead the division as its global head based in New York.

The move comes after Christie’s spent years assessing the appetite for the category, most recently with the blockbuster sale of the collection of Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay. Across five auctions this year, Christie’s sold 404 lots from Irsay’s sprawling trove of music, sports, and historical memorabilia for $105.3 million, which the auction house said was the largest total ever achieved for a memorabilia collection.

“We’ve been testing this market,” Christie’s chief executive Bonnie Brennan said Wednesday during a conversation with Puck’s Marion Maneker at the Art of Influence conference in New York, hosted by Puck and the Flag Art Foundation, where she announced the new division. “We feel that right now is at a point of maturity that makes sense for us to really commit.”

Christie’s is hardly new to selling celebrity collections and memorabilia. Its past consignments have included the collections of Elizabeth Taylor, Audrey Hepburn, Elton John, George Michael, Mark Knopfler, and David Gilmour. What is new is the decision to gather that business under a permanent global department, something several of Christie’s competitors have already done.

Sotheby’s established a dedicated Science & Popular Culture department in 2021 under Cassandra Hatton, who had already worked on auctions devoted to space exploration, science and technology, natural history, and hip-hop after joining the company in 2016. Last year Ralph De Luca, an art adviser, joined Sotheby’s as vice chairman of pop culture; however, his stay was short-lived, as he quietly parted ways with the house after a year.

Bonhams has likewise run dedicated entertainment memorabilia sales for years; in 2021, when it appointed Helen Hall director of entertainment memorabilia, the house described itself as the only global auction house holding regular auctions devoted to the category. Freeman’s currently operates a collectibles department that includes pop culture memorabilia, comics, video games, and toys.

Then there is Heritage Auctions, which has built an enormous business around collectibles ranging from comics and sports memorabilia to movie props and music. Heritage is where Benesh spent five years as chief strategy officer and general counsel before moving to Christie’s.

During the panel, Brennan said Christie’s isn’t interested in competing for sheer volume. “We don’t want to be the biggest,” she said. Instead, the house intends to focus on objects with the kind of provenance and cultural significance that can benefit from the storytelling machinery it applies to fine art and major single-owner collections.

To that end, the Irsay collection offered something close to an ideal test case. Irsay, who died last year, had spent decades amassing a collection that ranged from presidential documents and Jack Kerouac’s original typescript for On the Road to some of the most famous guitars in rock history. The first four auctions in March brought $94.5 million and were 100 percent sold by lot, setting 28 auction records. A final sale in July pushed the total past $105 million.

The collection included Pink Floyd lead guitarist David Gilmour’s famed “Black Strat,” which sold for $14.5 million and became the most expensive guitar ever sold at auction, as well as Grateful Dead frontman Jerry Garcia’s “Tiger” and the Fender Mustang played by Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain in the music video for “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”

Benesh, the new division’s leader, told ARTnews by email that the Irsay sale was “a compelling proof of concept,” but that discussions about creating a dedicated pop culture business had begun well before the collection was won.

For Brennan, the sale’s importance went beyond its total. “I sat in the Jim Irsay sale room, and that was an experience like I’ve never seen,” she said. Buyers were “backslapping each other,” she recalled, and hugging after winning lots. “There was no better example of auction creating community than that.”

Christie’s had seen signs of that audience before. On stage at the conference, Brennan remembered the 2019 sale of Gilmour’s guitar collection, when the rush of online bidders became so intense that the auction house’s system went down and the sale had to be delayed. “There’s real demand there, and we have to meet it,” Brennan said.

That demand dovetails with a larger push at Christie’s to use auctions to attract collectors who might not initially think of themselves as traditional art buyers. Earlier in Tuesday’s conversation, Brennan described bringing younger and new clients into the secondary market as an existential concern for the 260-year-old auction house.

“If we don’t invite people in, if we don’t make the next generation feel like Christie’s is a place for them, we die,” she said.

Luxury items have already proved themselves for Christie’s, where watches, jewelry, handbags, and wine can provide a relatively familiar way into an institution that can otherwise appear forbidding. Brennan said 75 percent of bids in Christie’s luxury auctions now arrive through its online tools.

Pop culture offers another route in, with objects whose significance often requires little introduction to a prospective buyer. The larger goal is to follow collectors across categories. “Collectors rarely stick to one category,” Benesh said. “We see tremendous conversion, but that works both ways. Our art clients are just as enthusiastic about these opportunities.”