W ith a host of premier luxury and fine art auctions, Sotheby’s is delighted to present an outstanding December season in New York. Join us from 1–18 December for the Festival of Wonder, an exciting luxury auction series featuring the finest examples of jewels, watches, handbags and sneakers – crowned by a special exclusive performance in collaboration with the New York City Ballet, which will premiere across Sotheby's digital platforms on 4 December. Then, on 8 December, Sotheby’s will present a new, cross-category marquee evening auction of Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary Art, encompassing the most renowned artists from the late 19th century to those working today, including Pablo Picasso, Claude Monet, Glenn Ligon and Mark Bradford. In anticipation of these momentous auctions and events, host Kurt Andersen returns to lead a tour of the sterling line-up, this time joined by men’s style expert Matt Hranek, as well as Sotheby’s Emily Bierman (Photographs Specialist), Selby Kiffer (Books and Americana Specialist) and Jamie Ritchie (CEO of Sotheby’s Wine).
Kurt Andersen
Writer and Public Radio Host
Kurt Andersen is a brilliant analyst and synthesizer of historical and cultural trends, a bestselling novelist, a groundbreaking media entrepreneur, and the host of public radio’s Studio 360. His latest book is Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History. According to Walter Isaacson (Steve Jobs, Benjamin Franklin), Fantasyland “is an important book -- the indispensable book for understanding America in the age of Trump.” His other non-fiction books include The Real Thing and Reset: How This Crisis Can Restore Our Values and Renew America.
Matt Hranek
Matt Hranek is the author of The Negroni, A Man & His Watch, and A Man & His Car, as well as a photographer, a director, and the founder/editor of the men’s lifestyle magazine WM Brown. He and his family divide their time between Brooklyn and the Wm Brown farm in upstate New York, though he can also be spotted quite often in old-school bars around Europe, Negroni in hand. Find him on Instagram at @wmbrownproject.
Selby Kiffer
Senior Vice President | International Senior Specialist
Sotheby's New York
Selby Kiffer joined Sotheby’s in 1984 and now has principal responsibility for historical American manuscripts, travel and atlases, and natural history books. He has been involved in the sale of many of the most celebrated private libraries offered at auction during the last half century, most notably those of H. Bradley Martin, the Garden Ltd., Frank T. Siebert, Otto Schäfer, Maurice Neville, and James S. Copley. Mr. Kiffer has researched and catalogued the most expensive book ever sold at auction, the 1640 Cambridge, Massachusetts, Whole Booke of Psalmes, as well as the most expensive letters ever sold at auction by Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and many other figures from American history.
Emily Bierman
Vice President | Head of Department
Sotheby's New York
Emily Bierman joined Sotheby’s Photographs department in 2007. Ms. Bierman has been directly involved with the department’s numerous important single-owner collections, including The Quillan Collection of Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Photographs; Photographs from the Polaroid Collection; A Show of Hands: Photographs from the Collection of Henry Buhl; The Modern Image; The Inventive Eye: Photographs from a Private Collection; Robert Frank: The Americans, The Ruth and Jake Bloom Collection; 175 Masterworks to Celebrate 175 Years of Photography: Photographs from Joy of Giving Something Foundation; A Beautiful Life: Photographs from the Collection of Leland Hirsch; and Photographs from the Ginny Williams Collection. As Head of Department, she is the lead business getter for the department’s biannual auctions. Her broad range of activity within the department also includes professional writing, research, and all aspects of auction estimate, fair market value, charitable donation, and insurance appraisals.
Jamie Ritchie
Senior Vice President | Worldwide Head of Sotheby's Wine
Sotheby's New York
Jamie Ritchie became Head of Sotheby’s global wine business in May 2016. He joined Sotheby’s in London in 1990 and was responsible for launching Sotheby’s wine auctions in New York in 1994 and in Hong Kong in 2009. The worldwide auction business has sales of $65 to $90 million per year. More recently, Mr. Ritchie was responsible for launching Sotheby’s Wine, a retail store and online wine business, becoming the only major global auctioneer offering fine wines at retail. Sotheby’s Wine has two retail businesses, one at their flagship headquarters in New York and a second location in their gallery in Hong Kong.
