DOYLE AUCTION HOUSE GOES HIGH TECH

You may have the impression that the art business is a fusty world filled with English-accented auctioneers and mysterious billionaire buyers. Truth be told there is some of that, but you might be surprised how technology and even sophisticated banks are revamping and expanding this business.

I spoke about the new world of auctioning not long ago with Kathy and Laura Doyle, mother/daughter and CEO and vice chairman (respectively) of privately held Doyle auction house. The conversation was at the Asian Cultural Center and I asked them about how they were harnessing these trends.

Laura gave an example, saying that her company— which competes with big boys Christie’s and Sotheby’s—was selling the contents of an apartment that had been done by the renowned designer Miles Redd (79,000 followers on Insta), and by putting items on Instagram, Doyle was able to reach Redd’s followers and new audiences as well, that might not have known these items were available.

Shipping, too, is a facet of the business that’s evolving. “There are a number of new digital platforms like Shiphawk,” says Doyle, “but so far no one has really nailed it in our business. Payments is another aspect that could be disrupted. We use charge cards but on a very limited basis because of charge backs, the terms of guarantee the credit card companies offer their clients and the percentages they charge. New types of payment with lower transaction costs and more protection for the vendor would be helpful for our business.” In the future, she says Blockchain could end up playing a big role.

And speaking of cutting-edge, Doyle is really intrigued by Artmyn, an interesting new Swiss company. “It’s the most exciting technology that I’ve seen recently,” says Laura. “Artmyn takes 3D photos of paintings where you can change the lighting to really examine the work in an entirely new way. You can see a work at a resolution and with an intimacy and with a level of technology that even surpasses that in person.”

Laura Doyle says Artmyn is essentially creating digital fingerprints of works because it can analyze each artwork’s unique features like brushwork and technical aspects, like “topography, reflectance and colorimetric properties,” which in total would be next to impossible to replicate. At some point Doyle says this can be integrated into some sort of Blockchain technology to really guarantee “provenance and authenticity or works of art,” she says.

This kind of process could prove increasingly important as financial institutions have been viewing art as an asset class. “There is a bank that we were working with which was building a collection of jades, for instance, and instead of investing in other kinds of assets, they were using the jades as an asset class for the benefit of their clients,” says Kathy Doyle.

To read the complete article, see:
An auction house goes high tech (https://finance.yahoo.com/news/auction-house-goes-high-tech-192013161.html)

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