Behind closed doors, private sales prosper

Auction houses, reckoning with weak sale totals in 2016 and facing continued uncertainty in 2017, are beefing up their private sales services, seeing it not only as a way to pad the bottom line in lean times but also as an increasingly necessary tool in their business-getting arsenal.
Sothebys announced in February that it had hired David Schrader, a managing director at JPMorgan Chase, as head of private sales for contemporary art. In a statement, Amy Cappellazzo, chair of Sothebys Fine Art Di