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Pick just about any realm and you’ll find a supergroup. In rock, of course, there was Cream. In sports, the Dream Team of the 1992 Olympics. There are even supergroups of superheroes: the Justice League, the Avengers, and Super Friends. Now, it seems, art advising has a supergroup of its own. New Perspectives Art Partners brings together former auction house leaders with powerful reputations within the industry, all currently working as art advisors, to join forces on a speculative new firm that’s testing the waters for a large-scale advisory business. Organized by Edward Dolman, the former C.E.O. of both Christie’s and Phillips, along with his son Alex, an advisor well established in the Gulf region, New Perspectives brings together advisors with long-standing personal and professional ties. Brett Gorvy is a principal at the dealership Lévy Gorvy Dayan, but he spent nearly two decades leading Christie’s contemporary art department, where he was appointed by Dolman himself. Philip Hoffman, who once worked for Dolman at Christie’s, has professional ties to Patti Wong and her advisory firm, which was built upon her long years leading Sotheby’s in Asia and deep connections to the region’s biggest collectors. Closing the circle, Wong and Gorvy have worked together as counterparties and advisors on many transactions since leaving the auction world for the private market.

A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR

The new venture’s goal is to bypass the auction houses—whose volumes have dropped and whose ranks of experienced leaders have thinned—to accommodate clients with large and complex holdings that require global solutions. “Whether it’s navigating an inconsistent market, or not being able to rely on the traditional platforms that historically served the market, clients are looking for a resource with a depth of experience and reach,” Dolman said in the press release. It’s no secret that many very large, quasi-institutional art collections have been built in the past few decades, by both individuals and families. In the coming years, some of these collections will have to be updated with purchases and sales, while others will need to be dispersed. Private collections are growing beyond the capacity of a collector’s multiple homes; some collectors are dreaming of creating private museums or foundations to preserve their art legacies; and many families and heirs, having experienced the cost and managerial burdens of these projects, are making other plans that may necessitate selling. Meanwhile, in some areas of the world, ambitious new collecting projects are being launched. Dolman, who has the unique perspective of having worked at the Qatar Museums Authority, sees strong potential for growth driven by demand from the Gulf states, where governments and individuals are competing to build public-private partnerships. (His son, Alex, also built his own advisory business in the Middle East.) “There is a continued commitment to the development of the arts and culture sector” in the Gulf, Dolman told me, noting the “unique partnership between the state and wealthy individuals in developing cultural hubs in their various states and kingdoms.” “They are resolutely focused on delivering things they think are important to their societies,” Dolman continued, adding that there were a number of successful families in the region now putting together significant collections. Once you get a good understanding of what’s happening out there, he said, you realize it opens a different route to sales.

The idea is that New Perspectives can use the infrastructure—legal, finance, and logistics—of Philip Hoffman’s Fine Art Group, which also supports Patti Wong’s advisory business. That will allow New Perspectives to come up with very competitive bespoke pricing for projects, while still offering clients wired-in knowledge of each of the three essential art-buying—and art-holding—regions. For clients who have a lot of art to place, Brett, Patti, and the Dolmans would ideally be able to come up with structured and well-informed lists of targets and pricing. The same should be true of acquisitions. Currently, Dolman points out, dealers and advisors have their own ad hoc networks that provide this information. But those smaller firms rely more on informal channels—gossip and intuition, the sixth sense that something might be happening somewhere—than the systematic information-sharing of a firm with New Perspectives’ reach. Plus, Dolman confirmed my observation from this week’s Inner Circle about what’s driving the private market: “Clients,” he told me, “are desperate to be shown something that hasn’t been shopped around.” Obviously, because no one is leaving their day jobs—or cutting their new partners in on their existing businesses—the New Perspectives announcement remains a tantalizing glimpse of the potential future for art advisors. And for all of the bright prospects Dolman outlines, the primary allegiance of each of the principals is to their own firms, not their new supergroup. Who knows what conflicts of interest between the partners and their primary roles might hinder growth or exclude clients? And if Dolman really wants to see information-sharing and cooperation on a global scale, he’s going to need to shift New Perspectives from being a fun side hustle to a firm with a significant client base and deal flow. At that point, wouldn’t it have to occupy the bulk of the principals’ time? That’s a question for the individual participants. For the rest of us, New Perspectives is a test case for whether that market has room for a large international firm.