Last week LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton announced that it had agreed to buy Etude Tajan, France's largest auction house. The announcement comes only four months after the company's purchase of Phillips auction house.
The two auction firms make an intriguing combination. The addition of Tajan will allow Phillips to enter the French auction market, which still remains closed to foreign auctioneers, even though the monopoly granted French auction houses is due to expire soon under new French guidelines. It will, however, give the LVMH team an earlier start than their competitors, Sotheby's and Christie's. While both Sotheby's and Christie's have new offices and auction facilities in Paris, neither has been able to put them to good use. Reportedly both have experienced heavy financial drains due to the delays by the French government in eliminating the auction monopolies in Paris.
LVMH's purchase will also give Tajan's customers access to London and New York markets, where Phillips has sales and auction offices and where taxes are lower than in France.
Arnault reportedly has significant investments in several Internet art companies, among them icollector.com, a new online auction site. You can expect the mid to lower-end goods that both Tajan and Phillips sell to end up being offered online in competition with Sotheby's/Amazon and Ebay/Butterfield.
Tajan has about 150 auctions a year. In 1999 it reported sales of $71.4 million. Phillips has about 800 sales a year. Last year it reported sales of $224 million. Both houses have major photography sales about twice a year.
Phillips has also announced it was looking for a more upscale premises in New York City.
In the meantime, Phillips has rented the American Craft Museum at 40 W 53rd St in Manhattan--a mere four blocks from Christie's Rockefeller Center location, in addition to its space on 79th St between First and York Aves.
Novak has over 49 years experience in the photography-collecting arena. He is a long-time member and formerly board member of the Daguerreian Society, and, when it was still functioning, he was a member of the American Photographic Historical Society (APHS). He organized the 2016 19th-century Photography Show and Conference for the Daguerreian Society in NYC. He is also a long-time member of the Association of International Photography Art Dealers, or AIPAD. Novak has been a member of the board of the nonprofit Photo Review, which publishes both the Photo Review and the Photograph Collector, and is currently on the Photo Review's advisory board. He was a founding member of the Getty Museum Photography Council. He is author of French 19th-Century Master Photographers: Life into Art.
Novak has published numerous photography articles and columns in several newspapers, including the Photograph Collector, Focus magazine and the Daguerreian Society Newsletter. He has been interviewed extensively on the photography art market by the Financial Times, the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Philadelphia Inquirer, The Classic magazine, Maine Antique Digest, the Art Newspaper, Art News, Art Business News, Focus magazine, PDN, Black & White magazine, Photographie Internationale, Antiques & the Arts Online, Art Critical and the Photograph Collector newsletter, as well as by many other publications, television programs and websites, both in the USA and in France. He was quoted extensively in the book, "Collectingphotography" by Gerry Badger. He has spoken at numerous photography events and programs.
He writes and publishes the E-Photo Newsletter, the largest circulation newsletter in the field. Novak is also president and owner of Contemporary Works/Vintage Works, a private photography dealer, which sells by appointment and has sold at exhibit shows, such as AIPAD New York and Miami, Art Chicago, Classic Photography LA, Photo LA, Paris Photo, The 19th-century Photography Show, Art Miami, the Daguerreian Society, etc.
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