independent

unparalleled expertise

&

advocacy

Art Market Advisor’s experience of the inner workings of the global art market, in negotiating financial arrangements for our clients and our hands-on guidance of the selling process, gives us a unique skill set unparalleled in the art world.   

The firm offers powerful advocacy in complex financial negotiations, customized marketing plans and oversight of both public and private sales.  

As we are unconstrained by allegiances to any one auction house or organization, we are dedicated to providing objective advice on selling works of art and jewelry, and to navigating the complexities of the global art market.

Unlike an art advisor, we work exclusively as business advisors to private clients, attorneys, financial advisors, fiduciaries, beneficiaries, and non-profit organizations seeking to maximize the sale of a bespoke collection, an entire estate or a single item.

The firm brings together well over 100 years of complementary experience working in the global art market to assist in the following areas:

• Soliciting proposals and valuations for sale. 

• Negotiating the economic terms of transactions.

• Developing presentation and marketing strategies.

• Reviewing and advising on contracts.

• Leveraging oversight and advocacy throughout the consignment or sale process.

• Creating strategies and thoughtful solutions to clients who encounter issues with ongoing consignments.

• Working with family offices or advisors for all art and tangible personal property matters.

Our team is able to be objective without being conflicted by any financial interests other than maximizing the financial outcome for clients.  We have no appraisal interests, inventories or other motives and therefore can provide clients with the best advice and results.

Deborah Schmidt Robinson

Deb Robinson has more than 30 years of experience in the international art market, advising collectors, families, fiduciaries, and institutions on the sale of significant works of art and collections. After founding Lioness Art Partners, a boutique art and estate advisory firm, she reunited with former colleagues in 2019 as a Partner at Art Market Advisors.

Ms. Robinson began her career at Sotheby’s in 1989 and spent 26 years with the firm in New York and Chicago, holding a range of senior executive and management positions. Throughout her tenure, she worked closely with collectors and their professional advisors on complex and often high-profile consignments, serving as a trusted advocate for clients and their interests within the auction house. At the time of her departure, she was Senior Vice President and Executive Director of Trusts & Estates.

Over the course of her career, Ms. Robinson has played an integral role in the sale of property from numerous distinguished estates and collections, including those of Alfred H. Barr, Jr.; the Zilkha Collection; The Collection of Joan Didion; The Wolf Family Collection: The Spirit of America; Ivan & Genevieve Reitman: A Life in Pictures; Brooke Astor; The Blair Family Collection; The Collection of Dorothy & Roy Lichtenstein and the Guennol Lioness.

Ms. Robinson has held a number of leadership and advisory positions with prominent arts and cultural institutions. She has served on the Board of Trustees of the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art and the Greenwich Historical Society and is a member of the Professional Advisory Council of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. She has also served as an auction consultant to the United Nations on special projects.

Warren P. Weitman, JR.

Prior to founding Art Market Advisors in 2016, Warren spent nearly four decades at Sotheby’s, where he became one of the firm’s most senior executives and a trusted advisor to many of its most important clients. As Chairman of the Americas from 2000, he played a central role in securing and overseeing many of the auction house’s most significant consignments, private collections, and record-setting sales.

Warren joined Sotheby’s in 1978, working closely with the Trust & Estate community, and in 1980 founded Sotheby’s Appraisal Company. He was subsequently appointed Director of Business Development worldwide and assumed responsibility for Sotheby’s regional network throughout the Americas. These roles gave him broad experience across virtually every aspect of the art market, from appraisals and collection strategy to complex consignments and major estate sales.

Throughout his career, Warren has been valued not only for his depth of market knowledge and relationships, but for his judgment in navigating complex decisions involving important works of art and collections. Today, he brings that experience directly to collectors, families, fiduciaries, and institutions, providing independent strategic advice and representing their interests across the international art market.

Among the landmark transactions in which Warren has played an instrumental role are the 1987 sale of Vincent van Gogh’s Irises from the Collection of Joan Whitney Payson for $53.4 million, then a world record for any painting at auction; Pablo Picasso’s Boy with a Pipe, sold on behalf of the Greentree Foundation in 2004 for $104.2 million, the first work of art to surpass $100 million at auction; Norman Rockwell’s Saying Grace, which established an auction record for American art when it sold for $46.1 million in 2013; and the Guennol Lioness, which achieved a then-record for an antiquity when it sold for $57.2 million in 2007.

More recently, Warren has advised on and overseen the sale of major collections and individual works, including the Private Collection of Jayne Wrightsman, the Stafford Collection, and Paul Cézanne’s La Montagne Sainte-Victoire from the collection of Edsel and Eleanor Ford House.

Mitchell Zuckerman

Mitch pioneered modern art finance and has structured well over $5 billion of art transactions and loans over the course of his career for a variety of high net worth clients.

His background in the industry started in 1974 when he was assigned to the Sotheby’s account by the law firm he joined after graduating from Columbia Law School.  He became Sotheby’s US General Counsel in 1979.  He moved on to other management assignments and beginning 1984 he structured, negotiated, and closed many of Sotheby’s major transactions until he left Sotheby’s to start Art Market Advisors in 2016.

As the creator of Sotheby’s Financial Services in 1988, he established Sotheby’s secured lending business and closed several billion dollars in art loans in jurisdictions around the world.  He also developed a unique vehicle to assist art collectors called “reverse mortgages” on works of art. 

Beginning in 1995, he managed Sotheby’s guarantee business globally.  In that capacity, he created risk sharing devices such as the irrevocable bid, and he innovated merchant banking services for art dealers and collectors who discovered purchase opportunities but lacked sufficient liquidity to take advantage of them.

Ghostbusters Firehouse, before the Reitman Collection Auction

Contact

We welcome your inquiries by email or phone

Deborah Schmidt Robinson
+1 917.797.5607
deb.robinson@artadvs.com

Warren P. Weitman, Jr.
+1 646.824.0333
warren.weitman@artadvs.com

Mitchell Zuckerman
+1 917.224.1056
mitchell.zuckerman@artadvs.com