Bonhams has teamed up with the musician-making and art-collecting power couple Kasseem “Swizz Beatz” Dean and Alicia Keys to launch a new initiative that will give consignors the opportunity to contribute to a model for artist resale royalties, ahead of the auction house’s marquee sales in New York in November.
The Deans are prolific collectors who have long advocated for artists to receive royalties after their work leaves the primary market. Kasseem Dean has discussed the idea of a “Dean Choice” model for an auction house since as early as 2019.
As musicians, the Deans are keenly aware of the importance of royalties in supporting artists, allowing them to receive financial compensation when their copyrighted work is used, streamed, sold or performed publicly beyond its initial sale. While resale royalties, or droit de suite, are common in other art forms and in more than 90 countries worldwide for visual artists, efforts to establish such rights in the US have largely stalled.
The question of whether artists should benefit when their work rises in value on the secondary market has been debated for decades. It famously turned physical in 1973, when Robert Rauschenberg shoved the taxi tycoon Robert C. Scull after a New York auction at which Scull sold one of Rauschenberg’s paintings for $85,000, after having acquired it for just $900.
“Artists have told us directly that this is the direction they've been asking the market to take for a long time,” Seth Johnson, Bonhams’ chief executive, tells The Art Newspaper in a statement.
Participants can opt in to commit a minimum of 1% of the hammer price or $500 from the consignor, whichever is greater. The auction house will match the percentage of the contribution in the hope that other houses and secondary art market businesses might adopt similar measures. Bonhams has not estimated or projected what the programme will cost the auction house.
“We're not approaching this initiative in that way,” Johnson says. “Bonhams built this around a shared mission with the Deans, and the reality is that we want this to cost us because that is a visible measure of success for this initiative, which is the whole point of doing it.”
While it is too early to announce specific works of art that consignors have agreed to include in the programme in November, Johnson says clients have so far been enthusiastic about the idea.
“Collectors are increasingly attentive to collecting in a way that reflects their values, and this program gives them a straightforward way to do that," Johnson says. "If others decide to follow suit, that's a win for artists and for the market.”
The announcement comes shortly after Bonhams announced new buyer’s fees, which will raise premiums to 30% on the first £25,000 of the hammer price; 28% on the portion between £25,001 and £500,000; 25% between £500,001 and £1m; 21% between £1m and £5m; and 14% on anything above £5m.