APAA Advisors in CULTURED

CULTURED shares their inaugural Power Art Advisor List of 20 advisors shaping the world’s top collections. Seven APAA members are featured. Read the full article here.

Abigail Asher

Abigail Asher—recently on her own after a three-decade partnership with Barbara Guggenheim, with whom she represented corporations including Sony and Hollywood superstars like Tom Cruise—characterizes advising as an intimate exercise: “You form a relationship not just with the art, but also the person who’s on that collecting journey.” Focusing principally on modern and contemporary art, Asher serves foundations as well as individuals she says come from the uppermost echelons of finance, sports, entertainment, and philanthropy. When the foundation of CBS founder and chief executive William S. Paley set out to sell $70 million worth of works from its collection (including examples by Francis Bacon and Pablo Picasso) to support the foundation and New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 2022, Asher helped make the match with Sotheby’s. She frequently fields calls from estates with collections that were similarly formed decades ago and have to be handled with expertise in the current market. —Brian Boucher

Wendy Cromwell

Wendy Cromwell has said she considers her first stint in the business, working in the contemporary art department at Sotheby’s in the ‘90s, as “the ultimate insider experience.” Apart from all the industry contacts she made, she now has the ability to know, mercifully, “when to stop bidding!” Advising looked a lot different when she joined the field in 2002. As it expands—rapidly—Cromwell brings to the table not only a trained eye but a commitment to maintaining the ethics of a business that once was almost entirely upheld by a type of art world honor code. With expertise in 20th century art and a talent for spotting young artists with promise, she has served as president of the Association of Professional Art Advisors and created a fund to support contemporary art acquisitions at the Smith College Museum of Art. —Melissa Smith

Barbara Guggenheim

With more than 40 years of experience under her belt, Barbara Guggenheim has been an art advisor for about as long as the profession has existed. (The Association of Professional Art Advisors was founded in 1980.) Guggenheim has more wide-ranging expertise than many, with experience in Old Masters, 19th- and 20th-century, and contemporary art. Long partnered with Abigail Asher, she returned to independent practice and maintains offices in Los Angeles and New York. Author of the 2016 book Art World: The New Rules of the Game—which Kirkus called “a charming passport to the unregulated art world”—she works with clients at all stages of their collecting careers and sees her role partly as an educator. Among her pupils: Hollywood titans Tom Cruise, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Steven Spielberg, along with corporate giants like Coca-Cola and Sony. —Brian Boucher

Todd Levin

Over the course of more than 35 years, Todd Levin has become one of the highest-profile names in the business, boasting more than $1 billion in transactions with his New York advisory, Levin Art Group. Clients are strictly confidential, but Levin was known as longtime curator of hedge fund manager Adam Sender’s collection of Baldesssaris and Flavins. He was also an advisor to Ralph DeLuca, who is now a power advisor in his own right, and was spotted at least once escorting Leonardo DiCaprio down the aisles of Art Basel Miami Beach. Levin’s expertise is broad and thorough, evidenced by the 110-page dossier he compiled for clients ahead of TEFAF Maastricht this year. One of the biggest rookie collector mistakes, he told CULTURED, is “not taking the time required for a modest amount of education.” —Janelle Zara 

Erica Samuels

During her senior year of high school, Erica Samuels made her way into an AP Art History course. “To learn history visually was just so cool to me,” she recalls. But what really cinched her investment in the contemporary art world, she says, was "Giuseppe Penone at Marian Goodman and the epic Matthew Barney Cremaster Cycle at the Guggenheim.” In 2015, she launched her eponymous advisory, Samuels Creative & Co. Today, her far-reaching practice includes facilitating commissions, developing art programs for hotels and public spaces, organizing auctions, and publishing limited-edition prints—though, she says, “my bread and butter is still the one-on-one advisory.” 

Ana Sokoloff

Ask people in the know to identify a top advisor for Latin American art, and Ana Sokoloff is almost always at the top of the list. As a Latin American specialist at Christie's, she was instrumental in building markets for figures like Hélio Oiticica and Doris Salcedo. The Bogotá native has expanded on her interest in situating Latin American art within the global market through the advisory she founded nearly two decades ago. Over time, Sokoloff has also earned a reputation as someone who invests in platforms aimed at simply bringing beauty into our lives. She recently co-founded Must, an online marketplace for artisan goods, as well as Bodega Piloto, a multidisciplinary art space in her hometown. —Melissa Smith

Zlot Buell

Here’s one way to create an art-advising power couple: put a 30-plus-year veteran with a deep well of industry contacts together with a Stanford alum with a strong interest in the tech space. That’s Zlot Buell + Associates. Mary Zlot started her advising business in 1983 (and famously consulted for the Fisher family, the Gap founders who have sent much of their star-studded collection to the San Francisco Museum of Art on long-term loan). She joined forces with upstart Sabrina Buell in 2012. With a focus on postwar and contemporary art, they are now the go-to team for young tech entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley and have projects that run the gamut from building the art program at the Dallas Cowboys Stadium to advising on public art at Stanford University. —Melissa Smith