Christie’s, the market leader in the sale of art from the Middle East, announces a new online initiative to further complement and extend their successful Dubai sale format and increase accessibility for buyers. This new, curated Part III online-only sale will include works comparable in quality to the well-established Parts I and II sales of Modern and Contemporary Arab, Iranian and Turkish art and enable Christie’s to extend the reach of this category around the Middle East and beyond. The existing parts I and II sales will be held, as usual, on October 29 and 30 at the Emirates Towers Hotel in Dubai and the new, online-only sale will launch to co-incide and be open for bidding until 11 November. Christie’s Dubai sales are sponsored by Zurich.
Michael Jeha, Managing Director of Christie’s Middle East, commented: “We first introduced Christie’s LIVE* a real-time online bidding service, as an option for participating in our sales in 2007, just a year after our inaugural auction here in the region. At each of our regular sales since then we have seen this platform embraced by new buyers with 740 clients from over 40 countries registering to use Christie’s LIVE. This April, our fourth highest selling lot was bought in this way by a collector transacting with Christie’s for the first time. This formula has been used successfully in our other sale centres, attracting 39% of all new buyers last year. We see Part III, the online-only sale, as a natural progression to further develop the category of Arab, Iranian and Turkish Art, as well as a reflection of the way the internet is perceived in this market which covers so many geographies.”
The Part III sale will consist of around 50 lots with estimates ranging from $2,000 to $50,000, with an overall estimate of circa $400,000-600,000. It will run from 24 October, over the regular Dubai sales, scheduled for October 29 and 30, and remain open for bidding until 11 November 2013. More details will be available closer to the sale.