Alicia Keys and Swizz Beatz Launch Auction Royalty Program with Bonhams
The new model ensures that living artists get a cut of their secondary market sales.
Summary
The Dean Collection, headed by Alicia Keys and Swizz Beats, is launching a collaborative artist royalty program with Bonhams auctions
A new model for secondary market sales, the program allows sellers to allocate a percentage of proceeds to the artist and Bonhams will match the share
The program was designed to help living artists have a stake and benefit from the resale of their work, and is the first art auction royalty mechanism of its kind in the U.S.
Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys are here to switch up the auction game with their new Bonhams initiative. Realized in collaboration with the couple’s own collection, The Dean’s Choice with Bonhams is designed to help artists secure a stake in the resale of their work. In other words, make sure living artists get paid.
The “elective sale royalty” system is architected “as a bilateral opt-in,” giving sellers the option to directly allocate a percentage of proceeds to the creator, a rate in which Bonhams will match.
“The inspiration behind The Deans’ Choice came when we realized that living visual artists weren’t participating in the re-sale of their works at auction or secondary market,” the couple said in a joint statement.
In 2018, the couple saw Kerry James Marshall’s 1997 work, “Past Times” fetch for $21 million USD at Sotheby’s. And while the the event set the house’s “record for a living African American artist” Marshall himself didn’t financially benefit from the sale.
“In music, when we write a song, we receive royalties for the life of the song, a long-term benefit for us and our families. We introduced a game-changing idea to Bonhams and they immediately understood the vision and were eager to partner in bringing it to life.” A “new model for how the secondary market,” the program will launch in November 2026 with the house’s 20th and 21st Century Art auction.
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Learn more at Bonhams’ website.
