Auction houses and catalogues: Home

 

Source:ekenitr,Flickr (edited). Licence.

 

• Price databases guide to research prices achieved at auction

 

For recent catalogues:

• Sotheby's and Christie's sales catalogues, 2020 onwards PDFs of sales catalogues issued since 2020 (Sotheby's) and 2021 (Christie's). Includes sales held in London, New York, Hong Kong and Paris.  Please email library@sia.edu for password: available to current SIA staff and students only
• snapshots of auction house websites are taken periodically by CARTA

 

Summon is usually the best starting point for finding articles, books and dissertations about auction houses and sales, as well as catalogues kept in the library in physical form. Summon does not find the post-2020 catalogues in PDF form described in the paragraph above.

• video intro to Summon (4 mins) 
• collection of guides if you need help with particular Summon searches

 

You may also want to run supplementary searches in these databases:

• EBSCO: allows searching of Art & Architecture Source and Business Source Premier simultaneously
• Google Scholar: an alternative to Summon
  • info about using Scholar 
  • video intro to Scholar (3 mins)

 

For introductory articles:

• Grove Art Online. Includes general articles such as auction and auction house specialist as well as introductions to individual auction houses.

 

Other key resources:

• Art Newspaper: key resource for current developments in art markets and both the commercial and non-commercial sectors of the art world
• art market reports
• e-books about art markets generally contain material about auctions
• e-newsletters:  for latest art world news
• PicassoMio Auction House Directory: list of auction houses by country. Covers all continents, but very incomplete
• Chicago referencing instructions for sales catalogues