The Artists Among Us

Sotheby’s Colleagues Curated into The Artists Among Us, Selling Exhibition 2026:

Paris: July 15-25

London: August 17-25

New York: August 21 – 28

The Artists Among Us: Sotheby’s Colleagues Exhibit Their Own Work in Paris, London, and New York

Sotheby’s, The Breuer Building, New York, NY

Most of the year, people who work at auction houses spend their days serving other artists’ work. So, I was eager to reach out earlier this year when I heard about an annual event at Sotheby’s in which staff may be included in a global exhibition. I volunteered my expertise within the company. It was an exciting project, especially since this year also marked the first time the New York site was to be in the iconic space at 945 Madison Avenue, the former Whitney Museum.

As Sotheby’s internal curators curated the exhibition, I was pleased to have two of my works included from the Mickey Finn series, and equally glad to see my colleagues’ creations, for those with a studio practice.

“The exhibition was staged in three cities: Paris, London, and New York. The New York installation ran August 21 through 28, 2026. Every work was offered for sale… with 20 percent of sales going to a nonprofit organisation in the host city. In Paris, that is L’Armée du Salut, which provides housing, emergency help, and social services to people in hardship. In London, it is Create Arts, which brings sustained arts programs to communities with little access to them. In New York, it is the Red Hook Art Project, a Brooklyn organization offering young people free visual arts education and mentorship.”

The Artists Among Us is a selling exhibition of original work by Sotheby’s employees. The participants come from every corner of the business: specialists and registrars, engineers and art handlers, security officers, client service teams, and administrators. Their media are just as varied, spanning painting, photography, sculpture, ceramics, textiles, printmaking, and mixed media. Taken together, the show makes a simple point that is easy to forget inside a company built around other people’s masterpieces: many of the people moving, cataloguing, protecting, and selling art are practicing artists themselves.

Sotheby’s New York

The works chosen for the exhibition are from the Mickey Finn series. The series takes a character drawn from the visual vocabulary of mass media, which I photograph and process via my own source material, twisting it into something devolved and darker. The title carries a double reference: the animated mouse, and the “Mickey Finn,” the drugged drink that in the port towns of the late 19th and early 20th centuries became bound up with shanghaiing. Sailors were welcomed with drink and woke at sea, pressed into service on ships they never chose to board. My ancestors were seafaring people. I think of them when I look at these images.

This metaphor of an animated mouse, an innocuous and entertaining television character, mutating into a sinister, manipulative cult figure is central to the “Mickey Finn” series.

— Will Martin

The full catalogue of works by participating artists is found on Sotheby’s website.

Will Martin, for Art Curious Contemporary, September 29, 2026

This project is a work in progress.

There may be additional and clarifying material added and edited over time.