Dear members of the Sotheby's Institute of Art community,
In a fragmented and sometimes fractured world, art has the power to elevate us to a higher level, where the imagination is set free to soar and the mind to contemplate and relax. We are honored and wonderfully privileged to belong to a community in which art plays such a central role. May our love and commitment to art unite us as this holiday season approaches.
We can certainly reflect on some great achievements and enriching experiences over the last year at Sotheby's Institute of Art.
Our students have curated exhibitions at the Sotheby’s Institute premises, theBLANC Gallery in New York, and at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. They have travelled the world, from Miami to Amsterdam, Venice to Hong Kong, and Paris to Lisbon in search of art, luxury, culture, friendship, and experience. An unprecedented number of students across both campuses undertook internships and work placements, and our careers services have been more active than ever.
We celebrated the achievements of the previous year’s cohort at our graduation events in London and New York where the speakers were Victoria Siddall, subsequently appointed as Director of the National Portrait Gallery, and Sotheby’s global chairman, Brooke Lampley.
A new cohort of MA Art Business Online students commenced their studies in September.
Our expert faculty old and new continue to publish research and be featured across external events and social media. We collaborated with an array of art fairs on a range of projects, including Volta and the Winter Show in New York, Untitled in Miami, Treasure House, the London Art Fair, and the Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair in London. In London we also held a wonderful fundraising exhibition entitled ‘Together We Thrive’ for our diversity project, the Cultural Leaders Program.
Our partnership with the art world publisher Lund Humphries has had a stellar year, with books in the Hot Topics series coming out on auctions, AI and ‘The Art Institution of Tomorrow’.
Finally, our alumni continue to make us immensely proud, and we are delighted by their manifold achievements in art, luxury, and beyond—one of them, Emily Craig, even won a gold medal at the Paris Olympics!
As we celebrate the holiday season, we wish you, our community of students, faculty, staff, and art and luxury professionals, health and happiness this holiday season and for the year ahead.
Jonathan Woolfson and Ann-Marie Richard
Directors
Sotheby’s Institute of Art
Photo by Andrew Ruiz