Victoria Beckham kicks off Sotheby’s Masters Week sales in New York

“You’re not my usual crowd”, Victoria Beckham told a bustling a room at Sotheby’s New York last night (24 January). The former Spice Girl turned fashion designer was there with the Frick Collection’s associate curator Aimee Ng and the auction house’s Old Masters paintings specialist Calvine Harvey to inaugurate The Female Triumphant, an exhibition of 21 paintings and sculptures by female Old Master artists of the 16th-19th centuries due to be offered across Sotheby’s Masters Week sales this month. Last summer, Beckham surprised the art world when she first partnered with the auction house to exhibit 16 Old Master paintings at her flagship boutique in London’s Dover Street. But, what got Beckham interested in Old Master paintings in the first place? Inspired by a fateful trip to Frick last year, she was captivated and “returned home and tried to teach David [Beckham] everything I had learned—it’s become a family passion now that we’re all very excited to learn more about”.