Sotheby’s Institute of Art–New York presents the tenth annual TIAMSA conference, exploring the evolving relationship between the art and luxury markets, both past and present.

Bringing together scholars and industry voices, the conference will examine how these two sectors intersect, influence one another, and shape perceptions of value across global markets.

Luxury has long served as an important context for art. In sixteenth-century Antwerp, art formed a key part of the city’s thriving luxury trade; Our Lady’s Pand—the first permanent art market in Europe—was one of several venues supporting these emerging industries.

In eighteenth-century Paris, marchands-merciers such as Edme‑François Gersaint sold paintings, drawings, and engravings alongside porcelain, lacquer, jewelry, and shells.

By the early twentieth century, dealer Joseph Duveen cultivated a taste for Old Master paintings among American industrialists, while also promoting European furniture, tapestries, and objets d’art, staging them in elaborate period rooms to underscore their luxury appeal.

Art has likewise shaped the world of luxury. In Belle Époque Paris, Paul Poiret—often credited with creating fashion’s first modern lifestyle brand—integrated art into his practice, commissioning textile designs from artists and sponsoring an avant-garde gallery. “The designer is, by definition, an artist in luxury,” he wrote.

Attendees will gain a comprehensive and critically informed perspective on the intersections between art and luxury markets through a full program of presentations and panels.

Key themes include:

• The evolving definitions of “art” and “luxury”
• The role of auction houses and luxury brands in shaping markets
• Cross-industry collaborations between artists and luxury companies
• The “artification” of luxury and the cultural positioning of brands
• The influence of luxury on exhibitions, museums, and retail environments

Download Program

Day 1

Thursday October 22

9:00-12:00am: TIAMSA Emerging Scholars Forum
The TIAMSA Emerging Scholars Forum (ESF) brings together ten emerging scholars working on different aspects of art market research. During this session, participants will briefly present their current research and receive constructive feedback from the wider TIAMSA academic community. The session is designed to foster scholarly exchange, discussion, and connections across career stages within the field.

12:00-1:00pm: Lunch

1:00pm: Conference Welcome and Keynote

Pauline Brown (Former Chair of LVMH USA/ Author of Aesthetic Intelligence)

2:20-4:00pm: Emerging Scholars Session I

Flavia Barbarini (Yale University Art Gallery) – Treasuring Drawings: The Role of Jewelers and Goldsmiths in the Sixteenth-Century Drawings Market

Emma Schwak (European University Institute) – “L’artiste Jacob”: Luxury Artisans and the Reinvention of Elegance in Post-Revolutionary France (1795–1815)

Louise Vanhee (Ghent University) – From Salvage to Splendor: Dealers of Architectural Fragments and the Making of Luxury Value

Discussion

4:00-4:20pm: Break

4:20-6:00pm: Emerging Scholars Session II

Olesia Gretskaia (University of Barcelona) – Old Masters and the Luxury of Being a National Treasure

Tlhokomelo Molokwane (University of Johannesburg) – The Things We Carry, The Things We Care About: Migration, Luxury, and the Public Life of Objects

Zhongbo Tian (University of Auckland) – From Auction House to Cultural Luxury Platform: Commensuration, Heterogeneity, and the Institutional Transformation of the Art Market

Discussion

6:00-7:30pm: Reception

Day 2

Friday October 23

9:00am: Welcome

9:20-11:00am: Modes of Display and Presentation

Barbara Lasic (Sotheby’s Institute of Art-London) – Commerce and Connoisseurship: Luxury Goods on Display at the Garde-Meuble de la Couronne, 1662-1789

Anne Helmreich and Pamela Fletcher (Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution/Bowdoin College) – “A very elegant establishment”: Selling Art as Luxury in 19th-century New York

Petra ten-Doesschate Chu (Seton Hall University) – From Dry Goods to Luxury Store: How Lord & Taylor Marshalled the Arts to Turn Its Centennial into a Transformational Event

Discussion

11:00-11:20am: Break

11:20am-1:00pm: Artful Luxury, Luxurious Art

Marta Pérez-Ibáñez (Independent researcher) – Luxury as Critical Medium: Political Art and the Aesthetics of Value in Contemporary Practice
Dominika Kustosz-Lee (ESCP Business School GRAIL Research Center) – The Anatomy of Luxury Artification: A Taxonomy of Artistic and Cultural Luxury Collaborations in the South Korean Market

Raymond Rohne (Modern Athenaeum) – Performing Luxury: Status Signals and Social Identity in the Contemporary Art Market

Discussion

1:00-2:00pm: Lunch

2:00-3:40pm: Market Models and Consumption

Alain Quemin (Université Paris 8, France/ Institut Universitaire de France/ GEMASS –Sorbonne Université) – Inventing New Models for Selling High Fashion/ Luxury Clothes and Art in 19th Century France: The Cases of Charles Frederick Worth and Paul Durand-Ruel

Giada Damen (Christie’s, New York) – Cross-Category Buyers: Art and Luxury in the Renaissance and Today

Charles Lawry (EM Lyon Business School) – Artification and Its Discontents: Public Responses to Luxury-Art Collaborations

Discussion

3:40-4:10pm: Break

4:10-5:50pm: Geographies of Art and Luxury

Stephanie Dieckvoss (Courtauld Institute of Art) – Fashionability and the Art Market in Milan: Clustering, Distinction, and Value

Yao-Hua Su (National Normal Taiwan University) – Silicon Capital and a Disconnected Art Market: Collectors, Platforms, and Taiwan’s Global–Local Divide

Jonathan Adeyemi (Loughborough University) – ART X Lagos in the Context of Global Luxury Marketing

Discussion

6:00-7:30pm: Closing Toast and Reception

Day 3

Saturday October 24

9:30-10:15am: Welcome and Conference Debrief

10:30-11:30am: TIAMSA Updates

• Presentation of TIAMSA’s 10-year anniversary book: Routledge Companion to Arts Markets
  Research (Véronique Chagnon-Burke, Adelaïde Duarte, Anne-Sophie V. Radermecker)
• Presentation on the revised International Code of Ethics for Traders in Cultural Property (Alicja Jagielska-Burduk)
• European Research Council – Recent Advances (Anne-Sophie V. Radermecker)
• Additional Updates

11:30am-12:00pm: Break

12:00-1:00pm: TIAMSA Annual General Meeting

1:00-2:00pm: Lunch

2:00-4:30pm: Optional Site Visit