Brooklyn Academy of Music

Situation: BAM wanted to create a unique art auction, featuring works from BAM's collection, as well as over 80 works by young, cutting-edge, and established artists of international acclaim. While offering the ability to view and bid on items live, 7 days a week, from 9AM-11PM, BAM wanted to extend their reach and involvement by providing a full 24/7 online bidding component.

Approach: The online auction was created to display and make available for bidding all items in the catalog and provide a central information portal where bidders could visit the auction site to view the work, place and track bids, and keep abreast of all the auction news as well as BAM's event schedule. Then, to top it off, a cocktail reception was planned to celebrate the auction wrap-up.

Results: BAM's auction was a great success, raising over $164,000 in order to help underwrite BAM's program, nationally recognized for its creativity and innovation. Of particular note was the sale of a single work, Chuck Close's "Self-Portrait," for $65,000. A total of 75 items were sold and 261 bids generated from 110 bidders and 160 registered users. Of the 99 items up for bid, 75 of them were available only in the online portion of the online auction event.