The 2026 Gavel Competition

The 2026 Gavel competition showcased the continued evolution of Sotheby’s Institute of Art’s Enterprise Studio, an initiative dedicated to nurturing the next generation of innovators across the art and creative industries.

Marking five years of entrepreneurial development, this year’s competition was hosted simultaneously at Sotheby’s auction houses in London and New York, with audiences across both cities—and beyond—connected via a global live stream. The result was a dynamic, transatlantic exchange of ideas, underscoring the international reach and ambition of both the students and the Institute itself.

The event opened with remarks from Co‑Directors Brendan Burns and Jeffrey Boloten. Burns, an entrepreneur, educator, and Strategic Advisor to Sotheby’s Institute, and Boloten, Director of Art Business at the Institute, reflected on the Enterprise Studio’s mission: to equip students with the tools, mentorship, and networks needed to transform ideas into impactful ventures.

Since its inception, the program has supported graduates in launching everything from data-driven art platforms to new models of gallery practice, anchored in key art capitals, including London and New York.

A Global Stage for Entrepreneurial Thinking

The 2026 cohort presented a diverse range of ventures that reflected the breadth of ideas emerging from Sotheby’s Institute of Art. With finalists pitching from both London and New York, the evening underscored the Institute’s global outlook and the strength of its cross-campus community.

More than anything, the competition highlighted the entrepreneurial mindset fostered through the Enterprise Studio. Each pitch demonstrated not only creativity, but also a clear grasp of execution—from identifying market gaps to articulating viable, scalable solutions. Whether rooted in technology, advisory, or cultural engagement, the ventures showcased the confidence, rigor, and strategic thinking that define the next generation of art world leaders.

The 2026 Gavel competition reinforced the Enterprise Studio’s role as a catalyst for innovation at the intersection of art and business.

By bringing together emerging entrepreneurs, experienced industry leaders, and a global audience, the event offered a compelling glimpse into the future of the art market, one shaped by technology, transparency, and new models of engagement.

As the competition continues to evolve, its global format mirrors the realities of the industry it serves: interconnected, international, and driven by ideas that transcend borders.

2026 Winner: Sophia Gollwitzer and ArtComply

The standout moment of the competition came with Sophia Gollwitzer’s winning pitch, ArtComply, a venture that addresses one of the art world’s most complex and often overlooked challenges: compliance in cross-border transactions.

ArtComply provides compliance infrastructure for international art handling. Art businesses handle billions of dollars in cross-border transactions in a rapidly evolving legal environment. Yet the operational workflow is still split across advisers, logistics providers, portals, emails, and PDFs. The result is fragmented responsibility, rising enforcement risk and potential personal liability.

ArtComply is the missing layer: an AI-enabled, rules-based compliance platform that turns documents into prepared filings, flags obligations for review, and archives every step in an audit-ready record. ArtComply is the operational infrastructure the art world is missing.

2026 Finalists

London Pitches

Alexandra (Sasha) Plotnitskaya – The Advisory

The Advisory is a digital members’ club designed to support the next generation of artists and collectors through education, community, and market access.

The platform addresses a major gap in the contemporary art market: emerging artists often lack sustainable career support, while new collectors struggle to navigate an opaque and fragmented industry. By bringing both sides together in one ecosystem, artists and collectors are able to learn from, support and grow alongside one another.

Through advisory tools, portfolio tracking, events, and a curated marketplace, The Advisory creates a more accessible and connected entry point into the art world.

Charlotte Ward – Arthur

Arthur is a digital-first discovery platform bridging the gap between online interest and physical gallery attendance. Arthur utilizes a swipe-to-discover interface to combat intent decay. Users engage through self-curated “Rooms,” artist tracking, and personalized algorithmic recommendations.

Simultaneously, the B2B dashboard, Arthur Insights, provides galleries with verified visitor analytics and forecasting data, effectively capturing the Invisible Majority of high-potential art appreciators.

New York Pitches

Tahlia Sisney – Opusfolio

Opusfolio is the first community and platform built exclusively for independent art advisors. Founded by a Sotheby’s Institute alumna who lived the operational chaos firsthand, it replaces disconnected tools with one workspace to manage clients, build branded proposals, deliver client portals, track collections and provenance, and administer professional invoices.

Alongside the software, Opusfolio gives advisors a professional community to share knowledge and expertise with peers who understand the work. Opusfolio provides advisories of all sizes the infrastructure and network the art market has long reserved for institutions.

Simone Alberto Rolle & Edoardo Clerici – Artstake

Artstake is a New York-based platform that fractionalizes third-party auction guarantees, allowing qualified investors to participate in guarantee opportunities traditionally reserved for a small network of wealthy collectors.

By pooling capital across multiple guarantors, Artstake helps auction houses externalize risk, broaden access to guarantee capital, and increase liquidity in the mid-market art sector.

The business combines art market expertise, financial structuring, and technology to modernize how auction guarantees are funded, shared, and executed.

Kiah M. Sandler – The For Arts Sake Podcast Tour (with Franceska Fisher & Sophia Olaniyan)

For Arts Sake is an interview podcast unpacking the realities of building a career in the art world through conversations. Art historian, curator and founder Kiah M. Sandler sits down with artists, curators, collectors, gallerists, and cultural thinkers to talk about culture, power, and the quiet rules no one explains.

With the launch of The For Arts Sake Podcast, we have developed an expanding base of existing and budding arts world professionals. This project pitches taking the show to the Venice Biennale to investigate whether such an experience is more accessible or intimidating to the demographic.

2026 Gavel Competition Judges

New York Judges

Brandon Busteed – CEO, Edconic

Brandon Busteed is an internationally recognized expert and business leader who brings a wealth of experience in the education and workforce development space, most recently as Chief Partnership Officer and Global Head of Learn-Work Innovation at Kaplan.

At Kaplan he developed partnerships with top-ranked universities that help pre-college students explore majors and career paths, extended Kaplan’s advising into the corporate education benefits space through a partnership with Amazon to support their 750,000+ front line workers’ paths to new career opportunities and supported an equity and access effort enabling universities to provide free test and industry licensure prep to their students. Busteed is a frequent contributor to Forbes.com and other publications and is a LinkedIn “Top Voice.”

Benjamin Doller – Chairman, Americas, Sotheby’s New York

Benjamin Doller joined Sotheby’s in 1979 and in his almost 47 years with the company has sold well over $2 billion in art. He is a Senior Expert in 19th and 20th Century European & British Art, while working primarily in the Impressionist and Modern field. During his tenure at Sotheby’s he has held the roles of Head of North American Specialists and Worldwide Head of European Paintings.

Benjamin has been involved in securing major sales of Impressionist and Modern paintings as well as American, Latin American and Old Master pictures. He has been a strong promoter of works by specific artists including Monet, Rodin, Tamara de Lempicka and Rembrandt Bugatti.

Rachel ten Brink – General Partner Red Bike Capital and Co-Founder of Scentibrd

Rachel ten Brink is General Partner and co-founder of Red Bike Capital, an early stage Venture Capital fund based in New York that invests in Vertical AI, Fintech and Health & Wellness. Red Bike is the go-to VC to help founders land their first enterprise customers. She is the co-founder of Scentbird, a Y-Combinator backed ecommerce subscription that raised $30M in venture funding and is a Top YC Company by Revenue (top 2% of all YC companies by revenue).

Rachel was CMO/CRO leading Growth and Revenue, scaling the company to $300M+ in revenue and signing over 74 enterprise customers. Rachel has been a board member and senior advisor for various companies. Before this, she spent two decades as an operator building billion-dollar brands at Procter & Gamble, Elizabeth Arden, Estee Lauder, and L’Oreal.

Vincent Xeus – Artist

Vincent Xeus is a leading contemporary artist whose work operates at the intersection of painting, architecture, and large-scale immersive installation. Over two decades of practice, he has built Xeus Studios into a cross-border platform developing projects that integrates art and cultural exchange. His current body of work, LIGHT\POWER: The Kennedy Women, examines the relationship between the individual and the forces that shape them.

Xeus has also served as Chief Artistic and Design Director of the Budweiser experiential pavilion in Shenzhen, China: RED186. His work is held in private and institutional collections internationally.

London Judges

Harry Rosebery – Honorary Chairman, Sotheby’s UK

Harry Rosebery (now the Earl of Rosebery) began his career at Sotheby’s as a graduate trainee in 1990. He became a Director in the House Sale department in 1999 and rose to Chairman of Sotheby’s Olympia in 2003. Here, he continued to oversee House and Single-Owner sales whilst managing the strategic development of Sotheby’s Olympia. Harry was appointed Chairman of Sotheby’s UK & Ireland in 2017, and Honorary Chairman of Sotheby’s UK & Ireland in 2025.

Harry has played a leading role in many of the most significant Single-Owner sales of the last quarter century, including the “Duke & Duchess of Windsor” (February 1998), “Chatsworth: The Attic Sale” (October 2010), and more recently, “The Family Collection of the late Countess Mountbatten of Burma” (2021). Renowned for his ‘sixth sense’ on the rostrum, Lord Rosebery has auctioneered hundreds of charity sales and in turn has helped to raise over £150m for charitable organisations over the course of his career.

Melanie Gerlis – Columnist

Melanie Gerlis became the art market correspondent for the Financial Times in 2016 and has a dedicated weekly slot. She was previously Art Market Editor for The Art Newspaper (2007–2016) and remains its editor-at-large. Before working in the art world, she was a financial communications adviser at Finsbury in the City of London (1996–2005), with a focus on the financial services industry. Melanie has a BA in English Literature from Cambridge University and an MA in Art Business from Sotheby’s Institute of Art.

She has authored books on the art market including Art as an Investment? (2014) and The Art Fair Story: A Rollercoaster Ride (2021), and is a regular commentator on art market trends and developments, appearing on television and on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row. A freelancer, Melanie also writes for The Times, a monthly column for The Art Newspaper, and for UBS’s contemporary art platform.

Patrick McCrae – Co-Founder, Artiq

Patrick is the co-founder and chair of Artiq, a pioneering art agency that is reshaping modern arts patronage. With a mission to elevate the role of contemporary art, Patrick is dedicated to creating new opportunities for artists, expanding their presence beyond traditional galleries and into corporate, hospitality, and public environments.

Through Artiq, he is a champion for fair pay and wider exposure for artists. Patrick serves as a trustee of The Renaissance Foundation, a London-based charity that supports young carers. He is also the co-founder of Queer Frontiers.