Bonnie Brennan

Spear’s Review

In March 2021, the $69 million sale of Everydays: the First 5000 Days marked a pivotal shift in the art world. The piece, created by Beeple, was not only the first artwork to be paid for entirely in cryptocurrency, but also the first purely digital artwork (and NFT) to be sold by a major auction house. Less than a month into Bonnie Brennan’s tenure as head of Christie’s Americas, the message was clear: the world of fine art was going digital.

Four years later, Brennan has been appointed global CEO at Christie’s, placing her at the forefront of the fine art and collectibles market. She succeeds Guillaume Cerutti, who led the iconic auction house for eight years and noted in a press release announcing the promotion that Brennan ‘possesses all the qualities needed to uphold and expand Christie’s market leadership’. Her appointment was also approved by François Pinault, titan of the arts, owner of Christie’s and co-founder of luxury group Kering.

During Brennan’s time in the Americas, the region grew to account for 48 per cent of all auction sales, and saw the $200 million sale of Ann and Gordon Getty’s collection, Barney Ebsworth’s American Modernist collection, and the record-breaking $1.6 billion sale of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s collection. However, global art market sales dropped to $57.5 billion in 2024 – the second largest drop in 15 years.

‘We see people are collecting differently,’ Brennan told the New York Post in 2024. They no longer want to engage with art by hanging it on a wall. Instead, collectible goods such as trainers, handbags and digital art are on the rise, alongside the technology used to bid, with 80 per cent of Christie’s clients now using digital tools to engage with the auction house. In other words, both the bidding process and the items themselves are increasingly digital.

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