After eight years in the role, Guillaume Cerutti is stepping down as the chief executive of Christie's to take on a new position within the wider business of the Pinault family, who own the auction house. From next month, Cerutti will implement and oversee a new organisation for the artistic and cultural activities of Christie's holding company, Artémis.
Artémis was founded in 1992 by the French billionaire François Pinault and is now led by his son, François-Henri Pinault. Its holdings including the Pinault Collection, spanning the family's vast art assets and two major exhibition spaces in Venice and Paris, and a controlling stake in the luxury goods conglomerate Kering.
Cerutti will become the president of the Pinault Collection and be based in Paris. Ensuring a smooth transition, he remains the chairman of Christie's board, to which he was appointed in 2023. François Pinault will shift from being the Pinault Collection's president to its honorary president.
François Pinault and François-Henri Pinault said in a joint statement: “Christie’s is a key asset for us, and we are deeply grateful for the positive changes and many successes the company has achieved under Guillaume’s leadership. We have decided to entrust him with a broader role, overseeing all art-related projects within our entities under our direct authority."
Cerutti is replaced as Christie's chief executive by Bonnie Brennan effective 1 February. Brennan is a longtime Christie's employee, having been with the company for 13 years, and since 2021 has served as its president of America. Unlike Cerutti, who was based in London during his time as chief executive, Brennan will remain in New York. However, "London remains the headquarters of Christie's and its centre and I plan to spend more time there", she said during a virtual press conference held 15 January announcing the appointments. Cerutti will also be present in London once a week as part of his duties as board chair, he said during the same call.
Brennan takes the reins of an industry-leading business, which is also facing major challenges amid a difficult art market. Brennan said she is focusing on "innovation in an increasingly competitive field", including adapting to demographic changes such as geography and generations, evolving Christie's sales calendar and considering how artificial intelligence can be used to "enhance business". She noted that Christie's performance in the last half of 2024 was "reassuring" and showed "increased stability", which is further demonstrated in the "incredibly promising pipeline of business we are chasing in the first quarter of this year".
While full details of the initiatives being launched under Cerutti's new role at Artémis are under wraps, he suggested that further collaboration between the Pinault Collection and Christie's could be on the cards. "While the two organisations are independent and we have processes in place to maintain that independence, I am not against working together on projects. I am all for collaboration between auction houses and galleries and non-profits". He added that one such collaboration, to show works from the Pinault Collection at Christie's Los Angeles gallery, had to be cancelled due to the devastating wildfires that broke out there earlier this month.
Cerutti, reflecting on his time at Christie's, remarked that he and the whole team achieved a slew of landmark sales moments. This includes the sale of the Salvator Mundi for $450m, still the highest price paid for a work of art at auction, and the $1.5bn Paul Allen collection, which is the most expensive single-owner collection to ever come to the block.
Christie's is also the only auction house to "make a serious commitment with real constraints to cutting its carbon emissions", Cerutti said. He also noted that when he joined Christie's, the house was "not active in art lending, but today it is profitable enough to have reserves large enough to be a major player in art lending".
He considers moments like Covid-19, the shutting of Christie's South Kensington location and the auction house's 2024 cyberattack as low points. "But in each of these moments we as a team came back even stronger, and that makes me proud and reminds me why we are the best."
