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• Issue #241
• Article

By Alex Novak

Bonhams New York City Auction Facility.

The British-owned auction house Bonhams may be sold, according to a news report in The London Sunday Times. The 225-year old auction house is controlled by chairman Robert Brooks, a former motor racing driver, and the Dutch Louwmans family, one of the largest automotive distributors in Europe.

The financial advisory group NM Rothschild has reportedly been selected to work on the possible sale. We reported similar activity nearly four years ago in this newsletter, when it was rumored that Poly Culture was set to buy the company. Poly Culture, based in Mainland China, is a former subsidiary of Poly Group, a Chinese government-controlled company with interests from property to arms exports. The board of Bonhams reportedly decided against the sale then.

Brooks bought Bonhams in 2001, merging the auction house with his own business. Since then, the auction house has undergone a series of other mergers, acquisitions and takeovers and now includes nine salesrooms in London, New York, Hong Kong, Edinburgh, Los Angeles and Sydney, among other places. In 2013, the auction house's London headquarters underwent a £30-million renovation.

The potential sale once again comes after an uptick in revenue. Last year the firm made £4.8 million profit, up from £1.9 million in 2016, according to UK's Companies House.

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.