How Sotheby's Conquered the Attention Economy

Phyllis Kao is a senior auctioneer at Sotheby’s. You might’ve recently seen clips of her taking bids for a 67-million-year-old T-Rex named Gus, which sold for a whopping $50.1 million to an unnamed buyer. Being an auctioneer (auctioneering is not a verb) has always sat at the intersection of performance and expertise. And in the attention economy, Kao has displayed a knack for both in a way that’s helped the 18th century institution navigate the modern media ecosystem while also attracting a younger audience of bidders. We talk with Phyllis about how auctions have evolved with the rise of social media, her thoughts on celeb-backed auction houses like Pharrell’s JOOPITER, why there’s such high demand for brand archives in the age of AI, the lost art of expertise, and more.

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