BLACK ART AUCTION
is solely dedicated to selling African American Fine Art.
About Us
BLACK ART AUCTION held its inaugural auction on May 16, 2020 during a global pandemic and began its journey with bidder #1. Four years later, we are presenting our 21st sale. We have held live auctions, timed auctions, single collection auctions, auctions including multiple lot estates, and even single lot auctions. Our bidding audience has grown to thousands since bidder #1. In our last auction, we sold works to four different museums. That is sooo important—but we did not accomplish that on our own. If you all did not participate, we never would have had the opportunity to make that happen.
Black Art Auction is solely dedicated to the sale of art by African Americans. Our goal is to increase awareness of the lives and work of these artists who have contributed historically, but in many cases, have been overlooked in the general art market.
Black Art Auction has already established numerous price records for artists’ work, surpassing a million dollars for a single painting; but we also are proud to offer works by historically significant Black artists that are affordable—in the hundreds of dollars.
In addition to the auction house, Black Art Auction offers a private sales division. The private sales division offers individual works by many artists as well as selections from estates of artists represented by BAA. We are currently building a gallery on Artsy and present a Squarespace store on our website featuring the graphic work of Sam Middleton. That said, we cannot do everything, so we (generally speaking) do not represent the work of emerging contemporary artists, and suggest working with an appropriate local gallery to those folks.
Black Art Auction regularly produces scholarly essays and publications on individual works and on the work of particular artists. These are all available for free on our website. Some of these are available in a print version. We have enlisted internationally recognized scholars to contribute essays about single works or artists. Barthe scholar, the late Dr. Margaret Vendryes, wrote a fantastic single work monograph on the rare image of Josephine Baker, including her ponytail. Dr. Theresa Leininger-Miller, author of New Negro Artists in Paris: African American Painters and Sculptors in the City of Light, 1922-1934 wrote an essay on the work of Albert Alexander Smith. Susan Stedman (Majors), who recently guest curated the Origins of Creating Community: Cinque Gallery Artists, for the Art Students League of New York, wrote an essay on the work of William Majors.