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Nicole Sales Giles Of Christie’s - The Top-Tier Auction House Leading In NFTs, Plus: Kris Bennett Of Blockchain Training Alliance, And More…
Christie’s is one of the top international auction houses worldwide, overseeing hundreds and thousands of luxurious art pieces from different parts of the globe. Answering the inevitable call of innovation, they are now embracing a brand new medium: digital art. Nicole Sales Giles, Christie’s Business Director of Digital Art Sales, reveals how she helped pave the way for the historic auction house to jump into the thriving world of NFT. Joining Jeff Kelley, Eathan Janney, and Josh Kriger, Nicole explains how they now directly connect and collaborate with founders and artists in search of the most impressive pieces of NFTs to add to their collection. In a sponsored hot topic, the trio talks to Chris Bennet of Alliance to share how they onboard people into Blockchain through stellar education paths.
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Nicole Sales Giles Of Christie’s - The Top-Tier Auction House Leading In NFTs, Plus: Kris Bennett Of Blockchain Training Alliance, And More…
Stay tuned for this episode and find out how an established organization brokering the finest art sales in the world stumbled into NFTs by hiring smart young talent and letting them take some chances.
Who on this show is holding a treasure trove of the hottest Beanie Baby collectibles?
How Blockchain Training Alliance is onboarding the masses into blockchain with stellar education and a path toward enriching new careers in tech. All this and more on this episode.
Don’t forget. We put together a gathering at NFT LA a few months back that brought out thousands of the world’s most innovative doers in the NFT space. Head to NFTLA.live to get tickets to our bigger, bolder, better, but also as intimate and impactful event happening in Los Angeles, March 20th of the 23rd, 2023. See you there.
This episode features the amazing Nicole Sales Giles, Business Director of Digital Art Sales at Christie’s, an iconic auction house and world-leading art and luxury business, as well as a digital artwork pioneer. Christie’s is internationally renowned for its live and online auctions, as well as its bespoke private sales. Nicole holds an MBA from Columbia Business School and a BA in Art History and Economics from Duke University and oversees Christie’s global strategy operations and business development of the firm’s NFT initiatives. She joined Christie’s in 2012 and has excelled in various positions, primarily within the 20th and 21st-century art departments in New York.
In March 2021, as the business lead, she facilitated the historic sale of people’s Everydays: the First 5000 Days, the first purely digital artwork to be sold at a major auction house. Prior to her role, Nicole was the Associate Vice President and Business Manager of the private sales division, as well as for the online sales group of Christie’s. She has also held management positions in client strategy and business intelligence.
Christie’s serves as one of the top international auction houses specializing in more than 80 art and luxury categories and an industry leader in digital innovation. NFTs are now represented and auctioned off as part of modern and contemporary sales. Nicole, welcome to the show. It’s great to have you here.
Thank you for having me. I’m so excited.
It’s super great to have you on board here at the show and all the fun things that Christie’s has been doing. Christie’s has been around for a long time, long before crypto and NFTs. We are talking over 250 years of real excellence in art and luxury. As an Art History major and somebody with a clear passion for art, what has it been like working for such an iconic auction house?
It has been amazing. I have been here for several years now. If you asked me when I was in school where I wanted to work, Christie’s is what I have said. The fact that I’m still here several years later is a testament to how great the company has been and how diverse things I have been able to do within the company because I get bored very easily. The fact that I’m still here says a lot. It’s amazing, the crypto and digital art stuff aside. The caliber of art that passes through Christie’s doors is remarkable. You get to see such extraordinary works of art and luxury goods that are sourced from all over the globe. It’s high-end museum-quality stuff.
Digital Art: Crypto and digital art aside, the caliber of art that passes through Christie’s is truly remarkable. You get to see extraordinary works of art and luxury goods sourced from all over the globe.
That’s such a dream job for so many people I know. It’s a ride up there. Tell us a little bit about the path to Christie’s. What was that like?
As Eathan said, I studied Art History and Economics and undergrad at Duke. I was fortunate enough to land a job at Christie’s straight out of undergrad. I studied Art Business as an undergrad. I wanted to work here, and all the stars aligned. I took an informational interview in New York City, and they called me back while I was still in the building fifteen minutes later as I walked into Starbucks after the interview. The rest is history.
We got a chance to meet the one and only people randomly by happenstance at the Dreamverse.
It seems like forever. It was less than a year ago.
That was 2021.
A good amount of time has passed since that iconic experience but so much has happened in the space, as the nature of Web3 is a crescendo on top of that. What was it like to be at the forefront of that movement with people, the one and only?
It was a crazy few weeks in the company. How it all came together is an interesting story. At the time, I was the business lead for our contemporary art online sales. My colleague Noah was the Specialist Head of online sales. One of our colleagues, Megan, who’s fantastic, came and said, “Why don’t we sell this NFT thing?” We were like, “Why not?” Our online sales division is typically where we showcase a lot of our emerging artists and some more accessible price points. We experiment with contemporary artists working in a variety of new mediums. This made sense for the online sales division.
Christie’s is working towards accepting a lot of innovation. They are supportive of everything that the individual sales teams want to do. They quickly were like, “Do whatever you want. That sounds great.” When we wanted to accept cryptocurrency, which happened during the sale as well, we got a lot of support from upper management and exec. It was phenomenal and honestly pretty easy internally to push that through, which some people might not expect.
Digital Art: Christie’s is working towards innovation by helping what individual sales teams want to do. This setup allowed them to accept cryptocurrency with a lot of support from upper management and executives.
It was an online sale. We started the bidding at $100 because we had zero expectations. This sale was over a seven-day bidding period. The bidding got to $1 million in the first eight minutes. It only stopped at $1 million because we had a threshold where we had to do more elevated KYC and compliance checks at that point. That’s why it stalled at $1 million for no other reason other than that. Once we started checking all these bidders, the rest is history. On the last day of the sale, I have a handful of clients bid it up from $14 million to $69 million.
Were you directly in touch with people during that process? Was he texting you guys on Zooms together? Was he like, “What’s going on here?” Give us a little bit of a sense of what’s happening in the boiler room.
He was super excited. We filmed him watching. There’s a video on our website. You can watch him watching the online sale prices going up, and you can see his reaction with his kids and his wife. It’s amazing. Mike is an awesome guy. I have been fortunate to meet him and get to know him a bit over the past few years. It has been amazing. It was a momentous time for Christie’s, him, and the market in general.
He’s a very chill, down-to-earth, unassuming, humble guy. He’s not self-promotional. Being vulnerable and putting his work out there every day probably speaks to the value of what he does. Beyond that, he’s not much of a self-promoter. I’m reflecting back on the story of how that all came out, and what you said is exactly true. There’s one level that I wouldn’t have expected from Christie’s. You have these long-standing organizations which have a foundational presence. A lot of times, there’s this idea that it’s hard for them to move and change because they have such history and momentum in what they are already doing.
The way you described how it went down also reminded me of the book, The Magic of Thinking Big. The author talks about if they have some good idea about the business and talk to the other people in the mail room, they are going to be like, “Whatever crazy idea, don’t worry about it.” You take that guy from the mail room and give him a second with the guy who runs the company, and he will listen. It reminds me that these brands and these established goes beyond the brand. I can’t think of these names, whatever. They are there for a reason.
They’ve probably taken these risks throughout history and stacked themselves with intelligent people for this very reason to be on the cutting edge and make sure great things are happening. It’s very interesting. NFTs like we said, are now represented in the auction office as part of the modern contemporary sales at Christie’s. Now that you’ve got that moving, what exactly are you looking for when you are evaluating these NFT projects?
Ever since that people said we discussed, I have been fully focused on NFT exclusively. Christie’s has backfilled my position. We were like, “Maybe we should focus on this a little bit more. Maybe there’s something here.” That has been exciting. We’ve experimented a lot in the past years. We’ve learned a lot, understanding what works and what doesn’t. At least for now, I will caveat. Most people who are reading this, and you all know, this market changes at the flip of the wind. This is what we are seeing as of now, what’s worked but time will tell going forward. We look for three things when we are evaluating projects. One is the narrative and the access to the artist. This is new for Christie’s.
Up until now, Christie’s is more or less a brokerage house. We sell art on behalf of one owner to another owner. It’s pretty rare that we sell art for the first time from the creator or the artist. It has been fun and rewarding, from my perspective, to be able to work with the artist and present their work for the first time to collectors, the market, the press, and whoever else. That has been new. We look for artists with who we are able to have a direct relationship with that we can tell their story in a way that makes sense for them and use our marketing machine that has been working for 250 years to amplify what they want to present to the world. I would say that’s one direct relationship with the artist.
The second thing is that there has to be a reason why the artist, creator or brand is using the technology of NFTs. We get a lot of pitches or project proposals to us where it’s either a brand or a creator where it’s not quite sure why the NFT technology is being used. It’s, “I have this physical painting, and I want to sell the NFT version of it.” It’s like, “Probably not,” or it’s a brand that wants to do some drop with Christie’s and wants to do something in the NFT space but they don’t know what because they think it’s trendy.
It’s pushing these brands and creators to have thoughtful and strategic conversations, which we are having to have with them when it makes sense but to understand why you are using the technology. It has to add value to the underlying asset. If the asset is valuable in and of itself, work with that. If you have a Picasso painting, sell the Picasso painting. Don’t sell the digital version of Picasso’s painting. Those are the conversations that we are having as well. That’s the second thing.
I can’t tell you how many times we are approached by people that have valuable archives. They are like, “I’m going to NFT this whole thing and sell it.” I’m like, “That’s a terrible idea. That doesn’t work.” I appreciate you saying that. Christie’s is being so intentional on that second point. I hope I didn’t kill your train of thought.
To expand on that a bit, the technology that has been developed around NFTs and blockchain, in general, is so amazing. There are many use cases that are valuable that we should be promoting. Whereas that’s what we are looking for. It’s the cases where technology is part of the art or creating value. It’s not always but a lot of it is that the art is inherently digital because, in the past, there was no way to ascribe scarcity or ownership to a piece of digital art. For an easy example, if a photographer takes their art or someone makes something on Adobe Photoshop. I’m not a digital artist, so that’s probably a very naive example.
If you are making something on Photoshop, you could email it out to a million people, but now, that you have minted it, you could ascribe scarcity and ownership. That’s when technology comes into play. We are looking for it in and of itself. The third thing is that we want to support emerging artists. In general, we are looking for artists with some level of a career trajectory where they have had some level of success with other platforms or venues, whether it’s The Gallery, SuperRare or whatever it may be. If you then get to Christie’s at the next level, we are happy to promote you and amplify your voice and demand but we are not going to create demand from scratch for a new creator.
As we think about the next steps, there’s so much on the horizon and so many opportunities to build on the foundation you’ve created at Christie’s. What’s next as you think about the mission going forward? We’ve heard a little bit about some things brewing on the education front. Fill us in.
We’ve had a lot of exciting stuff going on over the summer. I would say a little bit is tangentially related to our digital art team. We did launch Christie’s Ventures in July 2022, which has been an exciting initiative to help work on. We are focused on very early stage, like SuperRare, companies that are focused on innovation in the art world. It’s not exclusively Web3 companies but by nature of where a lot of the minds and build are now, a lot of those end up being Web3 companies. That has been fun to talk to a lot of early founders and where Christie’s could add value. It’s a strategic investment.
From our brand perspective, we are lending our Christie’s brand to some of these early companies and financial investments as well. That’s a new thing that we have been taking on. It’s because we have been so successful over the past few years that we have naturally been able to get a lot of inquiries and be able to meet a lot of these founders very naturally. It made sense to open up this arm and launch this division internally. That has been fun.
In terms of the digital arts, specifically, I would say we have two main missions or mandates. One would be to continue to try to elevate the status of digital art as a serious collecting category within contemporary art. Within our evening and day sales and typical contemporary art sales of our cycle that we do annually and biannually, we are making sure that we are including the best of the best digital art in those sales, just as we would the best of the best sculpture, photography or painting.
We are trying to educate our traditional collectors on what digital art they should be looking for. That’s how we view it. NFTs are the mechanism that makes digital art collectible, and digital art is another medium of this category. Concurrently, we are focused on more emerging artists, bringing them to light at Christie’s, and being able to bring in a more crypto-native community and presenting them with artists that we feel are doing amazing things in space.
I’m sure it’s in high demand for the ventures side of the business. The way that you are looking for these companies and founders to reach out to, what’s your process there?
My colleague, Devang, runs it. As I said, it’s not exclusively Web3. In my role, because I’m very involved in digital art, I naturally have a hand in the Web3 arm of that group. It’s natural. I can give my contact info at the end of this, and feel free to reach out. Ever since we launched this in July 2022, we have had several big lists of unread emails thus far, and there’s one person on this team reading them. We will get to all of them.
Welcome to the world of venture funding.
Also, the world of casting podcasts. I’m like, “That sounds familiar.” We have a small team that reviews all the inquiries. It’s hard because there’s a lot of nuance to every project, and you want to understand everything going on in the space. Plus, it’s exciting stuff, so how do you balance that amount of due diligence? Alas, good problems. I know you guys did a little mini-conference in New York. What other types of collaborations or partnerships are on your roadmap that maybe you can share with us at this time? We could always check in with you later.
Thanks for bringing that up. We had our fifth annual Art+Tech Summit in New York in July 2022. It was the first time we did a two-day conference. It was a phenomenal group of people that came from all over the industry like finance, VC, creators, marketing, luxury, and fashion, that ran the gamut. We had a congressman as well. A lot of different people in the space are coming together. That was amazing.
We are focused on bringing leaders together to come to Christie’s and talk about the problems that are going on in this space and how we can work together to solve them. There have been a lot of collaborations that have come out of that somewhat naturally. That has been exciting. There’s some exciting Christie’s news that you can look out for but I can’t quite talk about it yet. Maybe we can do a follow-up, and I can send you some information for you to send out to the readers.
Digital Art: Christie’s focuses on bringing leaders together to their auction house and discuss how to solve the problems of the art industry.
Animal, vegetable or mineral, what letter does it start with?
Please keep us posted. It sounds exciting.
Me too. I’m super pumped.
We will throw it in our newsletter and tell people on social when you are able to pass on those deeds. I can relate a lot to your mission in terms of that conference. In NFTLA, we announced March 20th through the 23rd of 2023 and said that you would be able to make it this upcoming year. Our whole thing is how we co-create the future of Web3 and make it a more meaningful and inclusive place for everyone.
There is so much potential value there and so many questions, concerns, and misunderstandings that need to be addressed. We need to make sure that everyone knows how they can play a role in the future. We are excited to have you in the mix. Thank you for what you are doing to elevate those types of conversations.
We love hosting them. I get to meet awesome people in the process.
It’s our work but it’s fun. We are going to be wrapping up this segment soon, unfortunately. There’s a lot to learn about Christie’s. We are going to learn a little bit about you coming up soon, which will be fun. Before we move on, I want to know what other projects you are inspired by in the Web3 space. We always love to hear that from our guests.
There are so many artists doing cool things and brands as well. From an artist’s perspective, I like what Sam Spratt is doing and Jake Fried’s. I will always love World of Women. Yam is awesome. I got the privilege to meet and interview her when we sold World of Women NFTs back in February or March of 2021. It seems like forever ago but it’s only March.
I’m ready.
It’s a Block Granny 2 CD.
A milk ad?
It’s a cup of coffee.
I’m pregnant. I’m only getting half-caf.
You got to tell me what Beanie Baby is.
It’s Stripes, a little tiger.
A ski house in Big Sky.
That could be a double edge sword there.
That came from Josh. Let’s hear it.
What’s the theme of the paintings?
It’s great what you are doing.
It’s a decentralized ledger.
No problem. Take care, guys.
We are happy to be able to offer it.
Important Links
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Jake Fried - Twitter
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Yam Karkai – Previous Episode
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@BlockchainBeardGuy – LinkedIn
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Twitter – Christie’s
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@ChristiesInc – Instagram
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@NicoleASales – Instagram
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Spotify – Edge of NFT
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iTunes – Edge of NFT
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@EdgeOfNFT – Twitter