I decided to head home, there’s no way for me to get there.
I hit send.
I stare at the screen, holding my breath, until the notification pops up: No internet connection.
----
—
In the field of auctions, video representation is nowhere near as important as the physical catalog. It’s far more important to have your clients pore over the stunning photographs, read the copy about the object’s provenance, to determine—from the placement in the book—how important the piece might be. After graduating from Sotheby’s with a master’s in art business, and training for a year, I was hired in 2014 as a junior cataloger in Imp Mod. My job was to write the words that accompanied the photos. A specialist might bring in the painting, but it was my task to bring it to life.
The library at Sotheby’s isn’t really a library, but rather stacks of bookshelves that line the hallways of every floor of the office. As a cataloger, I would scour the materials, trying to piece together initial research on the market value of a piece, how much money similar works had sold for, and whatever little tidbits I could add. The way to hook people on a piece of art is to find a detail that sticks in their minds—something that can personalize the work: this was painted the day before he met the mentor who would sponsor him as an artist; this was the first painting he did in oils; this image was influenced by Degas, Gauguin, Cézanne. Every snippet of copy was reviewed and edited and arranged to grab the interest of the buyer and keep him turning pages.
What this meant for me, practically, was that I rarely sat down during the day, unless it was to type a revision, and then I’d run mock-ups and edits from one specialist to another, to the marketing people, and to the art department that organized the catalog for printing. Also, we were always on a strict deadline to get the catalog off to the printer in time for the actual auction.
That was the reason I didn’t take the elevator one day, three years into my tenure at Sotheby’s. By then my boss—Eva St. Clerck—was the head of sale for Imp Mod. I was running something to her to meet a deadline, and with the elevator stuck on another floor, I opted for the emergency staircase instead. But I was in such a hurry, I missed a step and found myself tumbling down the stairs, breaking my fall with my left arm outstretched.
I landed in a tangle at the landing, my tights torn, my knee skinned. As I lay sprawled, I considered running back upstairs to change into the spare pair of tights I kept in my desk to prevent Eva St. Clerck from taking one look at me and raising a disappointed eyebrow. I tried to push myself upright and nearly blacked out from the wave of pain that swallowed me.
When I could breathe again, I wriggled my phone out of the pocket of my jacket and texted Rodney with a single hand. Help.
By the time he located me in the stairwell, I was propped against the wall with my legs splayed in front of me, cradling my left arm with my right. He hauled me up and marched me toward the closest elevator bank. “We’re going to the ER,” he announced, looking down at my wrist and wincing. “That is not a natural angle.”
“I can’t just leave. Eva—”
“Does not want to incur a lawsuit because you fell down the stairs when you were trying to appease Her Majesty.” When we reached street level, Rodney bustled me through the lobby and out the front door. The emergency department of New York–Presbyterian was only a few blocks away; we heard the ambulance sirens all the time.
The waiting room was half-full: there were mothers cradling crying toddlers, an elderly man with a bad cough, a couple whispering furiously in Spanish, a man in construction gear holding a bloody towel to a gash in his thigh. The triage nurse took my information down, and forty-five minutes later, my name was called. “Do you want me to come with?” Rodney asked, and even though it was exactly what I
I hit send.
I stare at the screen, holding my breath, until the notification pops up: No internet connection.
----
—
In the field of auctions, video representation is nowhere near as important as the physical catalog. It’s far more important to have your clients pore over the stunning photographs, read the copy about the object’s provenance, to determine—from the placement in the book—how important the piece might be. After graduating from Sotheby’s with a master’s in art business, and training for a year, I was hired in 2014 as a junior cataloger in Imp Mod. My job was to write the words that accompanied the photos. A specialist might bring in the painting, but it was my task to bring it to life.
The library at Sotheby’s isn’t really a library, but rather stacks of bookshelves that line the hallways of every floor of the office. As a cataloger, I would scour the materials, trying to piece together initial research on the market value of a piece, how much money similar works had sold for, and whatever little tidbits I could add. The way to hook people on a piece of art is to find a detail that sticks in their minds—something that can personalize the work: this was painted the day before he met the mentor who would sponsor him as an artist; this was the first painting he did in oils; this image was influenced by Degas, Gauguin, Cézanne. Every snippet of copy was reviewed and edited and arranged to grab the interest of the buyer and keep him turning pages.
What this meant for me, practically, was that I rarely sat down during the day, unless it was to type a revision, and then I’d run mock-ups and edits from one specialist to another, to the marketing people, and to the art department that organized the catalog for printing. Also, we were always on a strict deadline to get the catalog off to the printer in time for the actual auction.
That was the reason I didn’t take the elevator one day, three years into my tenure at Sotheby’s. By then my boss—Eva St. Clerck—was the head of sale for Imp Mod. I was running something to her to meet a deadline, and with the elevator stuck on another floor, I opted for the emergency staircase instead. But I was in such a hurry, I missed a step and found myself tumbling down the stairs, breaking my fall with my left arm outstretched.
I landed in a tangle at the landing, my tights torn, my knee skinned. As I lay sprawled, I considered running back upstairs to change into the spare pair of tights I kept in my desk to prevent Eva St. Clerck from taking one look at me and raising a disappointed eyebrow. I tried to push myself upright and nearly blacked out from the wave of pain that swallowed me.
When I could breathe again, I wriggled my phone out of the pocket of my jacket and texted Rodney with a single hand. Help.
By the time he located me in the stairwell, I was propped against the wall with my legs splayed in front of me, cradling my left arm with my right. He hauled me up and marched me toward the closest elevator bank. “We’re going to the ER,” he announced, looking down at my wrist and wincing. “That is not a natural angle.”
“I can’t just leave. Eva—”
“Does not want to incur a lawsuit because you fell down the stairs when you were trying to appease Her Majesty.” When we reached street level, Rodney bustled me through the lobby and out the front door. The emergency department of New York–Presbyterian was only a few blocks away; we heard the ambulance sirens all the time.
The waiting room was half-full: there were mothers cradling crying toddlers, an elderly man with a bad cough, a couple whispering furiously in Spanish, a man in construction gear holding a bloody towel to a gash in his thigh. The triage nurse took my information down, and forty-five minutes later, my name was called. “Do you want me to come with?” Rodney asked, and even though it was exactly what I
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