Recruitment

BONHAMS will call their newly merged American company Bonhams and Butterfields from January 1 and are sending out group managing director Malcolm Barber from London to San Francisco to run it.

RICHARD Madley, former president of Christie’s East, New York, has returned to the UK and joined Hamptons with a view to increasing the firm’s presence in the auction market.

Versatility and a clear career path lead the way: The future of the art and antiques business is centred on small teams with an ability to perform a wide range of tasks beyond their own area of expertise.

NICOLA Beach, who helped set up Drummond Read Recruitment and Training, has formed her own fine arts recruitment company to specialise in a narrower sector of the market.

UK: Edinburgh auctioneers Lyon and Turnbull are expanding their business with the creation of three new jobs, two of them in silver and jewellery.“We are bucking the trend by continuing with our expansion plans as other auction rooms in Scotland reduce their workforce and close offices,” said vice-chairman Paul Roberts.

AUCTION houses, dealers and other fine art businesses can now buy in expertise as and when they need it, rather than having to take on full-time staff.

Robert Brooks, who is in the middle of negotiations concerning the restructuring of Bonhams, says he is working to a target date of February 1 to complete his plans.

Christie’s are to make 23 staff redundant in Los Angeles, their second largest saleroom in America. The decision is part of an ongoing, worldwide cost-cutting programme undertaken by the company following the settlement of the $256m lawsuit over commissions and the downturn in the art market this year.

MALCOLM HORD has announced that he is to retire as chief executive of LAPADA, the Association of Art and Antique Dealers, at the end of May next year.

FRANCE: Francis Briest, France’s leading auctioneer of modern and contemporary art, is to join up with the modern art dealers and booksellers Artcurial (acquired by Nicolas Orlowski from Oréal in 1999).

Victoria Borwick, director of all fine art and antiques fairs at Olympia for the past eleven years, will leave the company after the November Fine Art and Antiques Fair. In a move which stunned the Trade, Mrs Borwick was told last week by Andrew Morris, the chief executive of Earls Court and Olympia, that her role as director of the fairs was redundant.

UK: LONDON’s art world was reeling last week with the shock announcement from Anthony d’Offay, one of the country’s leading and most influential contemporary art dealers, that he was to retire and close his West End galleries at the end of the year.

UK: JONATHAN Horne, the well-known British ceramics dealer, pictured centre, has been elected the new chairman of the British Antique Dealers Association. He follows John Bly, pictured left. Also pictured is the Rt Hon Peter Brooke CH, who has been elected President of the BADA for the seventh year.

ANGELA Nevill has been elected chairman of the Society of London Art Dealers and Christopher Battiscombe will take over as general secretary at the beginning of September from Neil Smith, who retires at the end of July.

FRANCE: François Curiel, 52, is to replace Hugues Joffre as head of Christie’s France in an adminstrative shake-up that also sees the departure of Christie’s French Director-General Franck Prazan, who helped mastermind the firm’s transfer to their new premises on Avenue Matignon. Joffre and Prazan are both expected to leave the firm.

The former chairmen of Christie’s and Sotheby’s last week were charged with a criminal conspiracy to fix the rates of commissions worth “at least $400 million”, in a dramatic twist to a four year US Government investigation into the two auction houses.

FRANCE: Francis Briest, France’s leading modern art auctioneer, has replaced Etude Tajan as the French member of International Auctioneers, becoming the tenth member of the worldwide auction grouping (alongside Lempertz of Cologne, the Vienna Dorotheum, Zurich’s Galerie Koller, Lawsons of Sydney, Swann Galleries of New York, Butterfields from California, Finarte Milan and Finarte Madrid).

LONDON: DESPITE there being no official announcement from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, the papers have been full of the news that Mark Jones is to be the new director of the Victoria & Albert Museum.

Sotheby’s Holdings have confirmed that eight per cent of their staff worldwide – around 165 employees – are to lose their jobs as part of a cost-cutting and restructuring programme.

SOTHEBY’S Holdings have announced their nominees for the firm’s board of directors, with shareholders due to vote on them at the delayed Annual Meeting in New York on August 3.