As the auction business comes roaring back to life on a wave of interest in historical art, impressionist and modern masterpieces have renewed their role as drivers of the market’s health. At the same time, a generation of auction house leaders is beginning to move on. Giovanna Bertazzoni started at Christie’s in 1997, when impressionist and modern art still dominated the scene and London played a central role in global art—positions to which they’re now returning, thanks in part to people like her. Recently, the 58-year-old Bertazzoni announced that she will be retiring this fall. I spoke to her about her career and plans for the future. As always, the following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

The last few years were defined by a retreat in public buying from Asia and a shift toward contemporary and young representational artists. Now it feels like we’re rediscovering a truly global market, with a strong European presence, too. What’s your read on the market over the past six years?

One fundamental difference between America and Europe is how property comes to market. America is an estate market, and our seasons depend on them. It’s strategic meetings, brainstorming about the legacy, how to represent it, our storytelling, our respect for the family, and how we translate that.

It’s completely different in Europe. In Europe there’s no advantage to selling after you die. Europe is now yielding gems, housed in well-honed collections gathered in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, where the paterfamilias and the materfamilias decide how and when to sell—not the estate. Or take the example of our “The Art of the Surreal” sales, which we hold once a year in London in March. That sale is built on uncompetitive business, won on old-fashioned relationships, working with collectors from Belgium, France, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Greece…

But the big collection still has to be thought about: how to sell it, divide it, understand it. And it’s not about the pitch or the strategy. It’s about the relationship. How many times you’ve seen them, how well you know them, how far under the skin you’ve gotten.

I’m part of the fabric of many families because I travel all the time in Europe. That’s what you build as a legacy for Christie’s, and that’s the fundamental difference between the two paces, tempos, and geographies. And I can tell you that we’re going to see very cogent sales in Europe very soon because this is the moment. The baton is passing, the generational shift is happening now. It’s up to us to make sure we’re in the picture and that we’re real, because there will be a lot of relationships where we’re much more featured than the competition, and vice versa.

That raises my next question. You’re leaving for personal and family reasons. Are you retaining a relationship with Christie’s? Advisory work? It doesn’t sound like you’re out by any means.

No. I’m doing something new. I think I’m among the first people to leave not to become an advisor, not to build a portfolio with a market-related agenda, and not to join the competition. I want to use the Anglo-Saxon model of Wall Street and the big law firms, where between 55 and 60, the partner retires—because this is like executive banking. We work 20 million hours a day. There’s no holiday. My whole life has been about working. I’ve done a great job. I loved it. I want to remember it as great and I want to go like the big banker. That’s why I use the word “retired”—I really mean it, and I don’t want any stigma attached to it.

I also don’t want to stay in the market, though I love it. You can’t be half pregnant. If you’ve been in every pitch, cataloguing works, still going downstairs to do condition reports because someone’s not there, knowing every buyer and seller—the way you are in the trenches—you can’t be out and still think you can do the same job.

So my museum side is coming back. Three years ago, I joined the development board of the National Gallery in London… I’m now at a stage where I’ll find it more exciting to get $1 million for the National Gallery. For example, my former colleague Rebecca Wei and I helped a major Asian collector—one of the defining collectors, who in my 2015–2017 years bought some of the best works from the best collections—to give a very good amount to the National Gallery for the 2024 reopening. That was wonderful, because it anchored the family to London and created a connection that’s properly global and real. They now have a foot in London in a major philanthropic way, and they feel at home when they come from Hong Kong.

I had to listen to that in myself. I want to study. I want to do a Ph.D. I want to do everything I never had time to do, take the information in my head and put it in another context. Christie’s has been amazing about it.

Some collectors want me involved, and I’m happy to be, but I’m not an advisor or consultant. When these people want to sell, I’ll be back to hold their hands, and I’m delighted to, because it means they trust me. I’m on the will of some of them, so I have to. But I’ll do it as a civilian.

Before I let you go, I have to draw your attention to the unintentionally hilarious story in The New York Times about the last-minute cancellation of a show highlighting the art and artistry of bong making at the Toledo Museum of Art. (Yes, bongs, water pipes for smoking pot.) In typically Timesian fashion, the story tries to uncover a scandal despite director Adam Levine’s frank interview with the reporter discussing the confusion around promoting an industry that is legal at the state level, including in Ohio, but illegal federally. “From a risk management perspective, we would have wanted to play it safe,” Levine told the Times. “There hasn’t been an exhibition done like this before.”

The comedy comes from the fact that one of Levine’s reasons for canceling the show, in which the museum had already invested $250,000, was that paperwork for loans and insurance on the bongs was not complete. The disappointed curator of the show, Susie Silbert, told the newspaper “that some delay was caused by artists’ ignoring emails from Adam Levine, the museum’s director, thinking they were from someone posing as Adam Levine, the Maroon 5 frontman.”

Staying with the Times for a minute, Sunday’s story on Dior designer Jonathan Anderson using Lynda Benglis as an inspiration for his new collection contains the interesting tidbit that there was a contract and a fee paid to the artist, who was given the opportunity to sign off “on every single piece.”

Finally, the Financial Times has been tracking Sotheby’s owner Patrick Drahi’s battles with his creditors in Altice. Now the FT reports that Altice’s creditors are starting the lengthy legal process to call in loans. That’s a threat to get Drahi to stop shuffling assets that are used as collateral. Don’t expect much to happen anytime soon. The story is clearly a shot across Drahi’s bow.

That’s more than enough for today. Isn’t July supposed to be quiet? Thanks to Curtis Rowser for all his help editing the Bertazzoni interview. On Friday, I’ll be back to tell you what else has happened this week.

M