Welcome To The Sotheby’s Medium Page
Supporting the future of art and technology
Founded in 1744 in London by Samuel Baker, an entrepreneur, occasional publisher and successful bookseller, Sotheby’s is the oldest and largest internationally recognized firm of fine art auctioneers in the world.
During our 274-year history, Sotheby’s operations have grown to over 80 locations in 40 countries. With ten different salerooms around the world, Sotheby’s conducts some 250 auctions a year in more than 70 categories. We are also the oldest company listed on the New York Stock Exchange (BID).
Sotheby’s is known for exemplary expertise in fine art, jewelry, wine, watches, books and manuscripts and more. But we have recently expanded our expertise to include innovations and acquisitions in e-commerce, data science and artificial intelligence.
Why we are on Medium
Founded in 2018, the aim of our Medium publication is to discuss our new digital developments in more detail. We want to engage with you, our audience, to give you a glimpse of the inner workings of Sotheby’s, whether it be via our acquisitions, Mei Moses, Thread Genius, Orion Analytical and Viyet, or our digital product team and fantastic online-only sales.
We are excited by the consolidation of emerging technologies — artificial intelligence, augmented reality, virtual reality and blockchain — with the creative economy. Our editors read a lot of great ideas about these topics on Medium and we hope to participate and interact with the debates. More than anything, we hope to gather your thoughts and ideas about the future of art and technology.
Sotheby’s heritage in the art market gives us a responsibility to nurture the most innovative ideas in our industry. We hope to bring together our experience, leadership and authoritative industry insight to support the future of art and technology; Medium will be the best place to do this.
What to expect
Over the coming year, we will be feeding our Medium publication with mixture of fresh and exclusive content in the form of data essays, explanatory and exploratory essays about our digital development. But we will also feature pieces from our editorial archive, video series, magazine and from thought leaders across the web.
We believe that the success of Sotheby’s on Medium is built around you, our audience. We are acutely aware that readers on Medium are a globally curious and inquisitive audience and we hope to tailor our content to and for you. We kindly encourage you to please reach out to our editor here for suggestions and please follow our Medium page here.
Samuel Baker’s keen interest in typography and printing kept our auction house at the forefront of bookselling throughout the 18th and 19th Century. As we start our journey on Medium, we hope to stay true to his legacy. Please send us your responses, thoughts and ideas on our publication as we write.
Thank you,
Sotheby’s
