Steib, who will take on the role of chief executive at the media company Tegna, will remain in an advisory role with Artsy through July and a board member following his departure. 

Since joining the company in 2019, Yin has overseen Artsy’s strategy and operations, as well as investments in the company and investor relations. Yin also oversaw the expansion of Artsy’s e-commerce transaction capabilities, which now include 37 countries and three currencies, the dollar, the British pound, and the euro.

In an email interview with ARTnews, Yin said that he doesn’t foresee any abrupt shifts in Artsy’s business strategy. Rather, his focus will be enhancing current efforts and “supporting our gallery partners, building out our secondary market business, and expanding the reach of artists globally.”

“My approach will bring a renewed focus on a few specific areas,” Yin said. “I have been involved with the business for five years, ensuring a deep understanding of our strategy and operations.”

Yin cited his passion for collecting works by emerging LGBTQ+, AAPI, Californian, French, and Italian artists as being influential to the company’s future path under his leadership. “My personal connection to these communities and regions … drives my commitment to diversity and representation within the art world. This perspective will shape our strategies and initiatives moving forward.”

He moves in to his new role at a time of cautious optimism in the art market, which over the last two years have shown collectors to be more thoughtful about their spending.

“The art market has proven uneven for many over the last year,” Yin said. “However, collectors continue to buy on Artsy and offline, and I am cautiously optimistic about the resilience of the art market because the joy people feel when collecting and appreciating art hasn’t diminished.”

According to the 2024 Global Art Market Report by Art Basel and UBS, online collecting, which began in earnest following the Covid-19 pandemic and was thought by some to be in decline after restrictions eased, has grown significantly in the last years. Per that report, online sales accounted for $11.8 billion last year alone, a 7 percent rise from 2022’s figure.

In a June 21 email obtained by ARTnews, chief executive Mike Steib informed staff that those terminated would receive—within five minutes—a calendar invite to discuss severance packages. Steib also recommended that New York-based employees work from home to “give everyone privacy to process this news.”

“For now I’ll note that, though our business is stable and revenue has been growing, the broader economic headwinds and art market slow down were pushing profitability out of reach this year, which would have put our business and mission in jeopardy,” he wrote in the email.

A spokesperson for Artsy confirmed in an email to ARTnews that it had “parted ways” with 35 employees: “This decision was not made lightly but allows us to continue to operate sustainably and support our thousands of gallery partners and the artists they serve.”

Artsy was founded in 2009 as Art.sy and publicly launched three years later. The company’s business model has rapidly evolved in the decade since. The first initiative, called the Art Genome Project, used machine learning to catalogue and predict visitors’ visual art tastes; the tool was later enveloped into a subscription service in which galleries paid a monthly fee to host artworks on the platform. An editorial section was added to generate traffic to the platform. As was standard for websites in the early 2010s: clicks, or impressions, were marketed to investors as potential customers.

Successive funding rounds netted $100 million in investment; a single round in 2017 brought in $50 million at $275 million valuation. It boasted a who’s who of high-profile investors from art and tech, including mega-gallerist Larry Gagosian, art collector and founder of Moscow’s Garage Museum of Contemporary Art Dasha Zhukova, Twitter and Block founder Jack Dorsey, and art collector Wendi Deng Murdoch.

In February 2019, Artsy announced its first significant layoffs, when most of the content-sales division was terminated, followed that September by an additional 20 employees across its editorial, communications, and curatorial sections. 

Per reports at the time, the total culled represented 10 percent of Artsy’s staff and included the remaining members of the content-sales team. Shortly before the layoffs, Sebastian Cwilich, Artsy cofounder with Carter Cleveland, stepped down after nine years as president and chief operating officer, to join Gagosian gallery. That June, Steib (formerly of XO Group Inc.) joined as CEO.

Simon Warren, Artsy’s senior director of communications, told ARTnews via email at the time that the 2019 layoffs were part of the company’s efforts to focus on its art marketplace, which is “an increasingly meaningful source of revenue and key area of growth for our business.”

“A very modest single-digit reduction in our workforce will help support this increased investment in our marketplace . . . as well as our continued investment in Artsy’s editorial platform,” Warren wrote. 

In 2020, as the coronavirus forced non-essential businesses to shutter, most galleries with money to spare moved their dealings online. That year, Artsy, which bills itself as the art world’s largest digital sales platform with 2.5 million users as of 2023, and according to a report in the Art Newspaper, detailed a 15 percent commission on the “buy now” feature introduced earlier that year. Membership prices before then typically fell between $400 and $1,000, and commission rates capped around 5 percent. (As a private company, Artsy isn’t obligated to report profits or losses.) Artsy reportedly offered reduced membership rates to small galleries particularly affected by the effects of coronavirus and discounts to some galleries that were impacted by canceled or postponed fairs, including non-member organizations.

As 2020 progressed, however, the company faced backlash from clients soured by the self-promotion of its listing packages; in an internal newsletter reviewed by the Art Newspaper, Steib positively noted a 25 percent increase in website traffic following the prolonged shutdown of nonessential businesses. (He apologized for the email’s tactlessness in a subsequent statement.) 

His June 21 email was similarly contrite. “With these changes,” he wrote, “Artsy will reach the financial sustainability we’ve worked so hard to achieve, ensuring we can continue to serve our partners and collectors and build a better art world for many years to come.”

“I wish we could have gotten there another way,” he added. “I want to say I am sorry to each of you who I have let down today.”

“Art is often bought in a moment of passion,” Artsy CEO Mike Steib says in this ARTnews LIVE with CEOs interview (watch the interview on YouTube or listen to a podcast in the player above.) “The first rule of e-commerce is you never add friction to a transaction when you’re in a moment of passion.”

The global pandemic has created unexpected opportunities in certain sectors of the economy. For the art world, Artsy was uniquely positioned to benefit from the closure of galleries, the curtailment of travel and the hiatus in art fairs. With fewer venues to show their artists’ work, galleries have relied more and more on services like Artsy to promote their artists and make contact with collectors.

According to Steib, galleries have tripled their revenue from online sources in the last year. Artsy has tried to play a part in that by bringing as much art together in one place, now more than 1 million items, as it can; by making it easier to match a collector’s interest with an artist’s work; and by lowering the barriers to a transaction.

One key element in enabling transactions has been to reduce the number of steps between the buyer and the seller. Five years ago, it took an average of a month between a collector expressing interest and a buyer connecting. Now Artsy offers a “buy now” option where the gallery lists the work with a public price and the buyer can make an immediate decision.

Steib says the conversion rate for galleries is four to six times higher with the “buy now” option. That, perhaps more than any other reason, is why more of the work on Artsy is listed with a public price, one of the key irritants previously hampering online art sales.

Based upon the experience of the last year in lockdown, Steib feels the art market is poised for expansion. “When you think about the 17 million high net worth individuals around the world who hold almost 50 trillion dollars of wealth,” he says. “There is enough resource on the sidelines in this industry to support an art industry that is 10 to 20 times the size it is today.”

The key to making that happen is supporting buyers with information that builds knowledge and confidence. “When you can provide someone who is accustomed to being an intelligent decision-maker with those kinds of insights,” Steib says of need for visible pricing and a critical mass of art work available on a single platform, “then that person can feel like an intelligent decision maker in the art world. And then the art world can get much, much bigger.”

Mike Steib.

COURTESY ARTSY

Artsy has tapped Mike Steib as  CEO to take over for Carter Cleveland, the online platform’s co-founder and former chief executive, who will move into a newly created role as executive chairman.

Steib joins Artsy following five years as CEO of XO Group Inc., the parent company of the wedding-services online portal The Knot, which merged this year with WeddingWire to become The Knot Worldwide. He has also worked in leadership positions with Google, Vente-Privée USA, NBC Universal, and McKinsey & Company.

While at XO Group, Steib oversaw the tripling of the company’s value over five years, according to an Artsy press release, by monetizing traffic and making it a two-sided marketplace akin to Artsy. “He’s always been someone I’ve really admired, and I’ve been very inspired by what he’s achieved,” Cleveland told ARTnews. “When I look at the specifics of how he did it, I couldn’t imagine a better fit.”

Cleveland said he developed an interest in Steib for the role of CEO when searching for a replacement for co-founder Sebastian Cwilich, who left his position as president and chief operating officer for a senior advising position with Gagosian gallery, staying on with Artsy in a senior advising role. “During that process I found an opportunity to step back and consider more broadly what the right leadership configuration for Artsy [would look like],” Cleveland said.

Steib, who also serves as chairman emeritus for nonprofit Literacy Partners, stated of his appointment in a release, “I am honored to take on the role of CEO of Artsy at this exciting time for the company. Artsy has made an important impact on the art world, one of the last consumer industries to move online, making it easier than ever to buy and sell art.”

Cleveland also added of his own pivot, “Transitioning into this position allows me to better lean in to my strengths while continuing to serve Artsy. I look forward to working closely with Mike and the board on a daily basis supporting them on strategy, vision, culture, and recruiting as needed.”

Sebastian Cwilich.

COURTESY GAGOSIAN

As the mega-galleries continue to battle for market share, Gagosian, most often cited as the world’s largest gallery, is beefing up its technology team. Today the gallery shared exclusively with ARTnews that it has hired as a part-time senior adviser Sebastian Cwilich, the co-founder of Artsy.

Back in January, Cwilich left his position as Artsy’s president and chief operating officer. He had been with the company he created with Carter Cleveland for nine years.

Gagosian’s tech department is a relatively recent addition to the gallery, the result of its hire last year of a chief technology officer in Gareth O’Loughlin, formerly the vice president of technology at Casper, the mattress startup.

“Gareth and Sebastian are both leaders in the field, with a broad range of skill sets and unique perspectives on technology, business strategy, and operations,” Larry Gagosian, the gallery’s founder, told ARTnews in a statement. “They will be great additions to the gallery, enhancing and expanding our innovative work.”

Outside his dealings at the gallery, Gagosian was one of the first backers of Artsy, along with Russian collector Dasha Zhukova, a fixture of the ARTnews Top 200 Collectors list, and Airbnb founder Joe Gebbia.

“I’m thrilled to be working with Larry and the talented team at Gagosian,” Cwilich wrote to ARTnews. “The gallery has a clear track record of innovation that sets the pace for the rest of the industry: from international expansion, to museum-quality non-selling exhibitions, to publications and online viewing rooms, to more recent moves like hiring a CTO and Larry launching a new standalone advisory business. As art industry change accelerates, I’m confident Gagosian is well-positioned to build on this track record and continue innovating and leading the industry. I’m looking forward to supporting Larry and the team in those efforts.”

Gagosian is one of the few galleries in the world that operates on such a large scale—with numerous points of entry including a shop, restaurants, a website, and 17 galleries around the world—that it can benefit from using large amounts of data to help guide its strategy. (Think Moneyball.)

O’Loughlin, who is based in New York, described the ways in which he is implementing technology within the gallery as “both operational and strategic.” Pointing out that the gallery “already has a very big capability on the content side,” he said that he is focused on “what we can be doing for collectors, artists, and staff. Listening to their needs, and what would make their experience better. Looking at anywhere that technology could have an influence.”

Over the past year, Gagosian has been experimenting with online viewing rooms timed to major art fairs—the most recent one, during Art Basel Hong Kong, was devoted to a single work, an Albert Oehlen painting that reportedly sold for $6 million, besting the artist’s auction record. But the new department is equally dedicated to using technology to enhance internal operations through programs like a customized art database.

Sam Orlofsky, a longtime director in Gagosian’s New York headquarters, has been closely involved in such initiatives at the gallery, including the online viewing rooms, and has been working closely with O’Loughlin. “I’m interested in making the business as successful and productive as possible, both for Larry and for the artists,” Orlofsky told ARTnews. “I try to keep an open mind, looking at how other fields are evolving and seeing if there are ways that our field can evolve in similar fashion. Luckily I’m at a place that supports that.”

Like Orlofsky, O’Loughlin is on the gallery’s recently formed 24-member advisory board.

Sandy Cass.

COURTESY ARTSY

About five months after Artsy cofounder Sebastian Cwilich announced that he was stepping down as its chief operating officer to become a senior adviser, the online art sales company has named an interim replacement: Sandy Cass, its chief financial officer. Cass will hold the CFO and COO titles simultaneously.

Carter Cleveland, Artsy’s CEO and cofounder, said in a statement, “With his on-­point experience, business acumen, strategic thinking, and domain expertise, Sandy is perfectly positioned to lead Artsy forward as our interim COO.”

Cass is an art collector as well as an investor and adviser to several early-stage companies. “As an avid consumer and collector of art,” he said in a statement of his own, “it is a privilege to take on this additional responsibility in pursuit of Artsy’s mission of expanding the art market to support more artists and art in the world.”

Marina Garcia-Vasquez.

COURTESY ARTSY

The editorial portion of the art-commerce website Artsy has appointed an editor-in-chief, Marina Garcia-Vasquez.

Garcia-Vasquez is the first person to hold the newly created position, and she joins following her time working with Vice Media and the Wall Street Journal.

Garcia-Vasquez will report to Artsy’s vice president of editorial and creative, Marina Cashdan, who said in a release, “We’re extremely excited to onboard someone with Marina’s depth of experience—particularly at Vice Media where she held senior roles—to further develop our voice and bring Artsy’s world­-class content to an even larger and more diverse audience of art lovers and collectors.”

At Vice, Garcia-Vasquez served as the editor-in-chief of its since-shuttered arts and tech crossover website, The Creators Project (where, full disclosure, I worked with her). She said in a statement, “Writing has always led me to art and I have a deep veneration for artists’ practice. To lead and support the immeasurably talented editorial team at Artsy, and play a part in growing and tailoring the scope of the editorial content, represented an immensely exciting opportunity for me at the intersection of my experience and passions.”

Samuel Rozenberg.

COURTESY ARTSY

Artsy has tapped Samuel Rozenberg to be its new vice president of engineering. In the newly created position, Rozenberg will be in charge of directing Artsy’s technology organization. He takes the reins from Daniel Doubrovkine, who is stepping down after eight years as the company’s chief technology officer.

Rozenberg joins Artsy following his time as an engineer lead with companies such as Instagram and Spotify.

Carter Cleveland, Artsy’s CEO and cofounder, said in a statement, “In his role as VP of engineering, Samuel brings to Artsy not only his outstanding engineering pedigree and his proven track record at two of the most influential technology companies of our age—Instagram and Spotify—but also his standout people management skills and values, which will greatly benefit Artsy as we continue to scale our consumer marketplace.”

Artsy’s home page.

In an email sent to its users on Wednesday evening, the chief technology officer of Artsy—an online platform that offers views into the art world as well as works for sale for prices between “$100 to over $1,000,000,” as its website states—alerted users to “a data security incident that may have impacted your Artsy account data.” The notice, signed by Artsy chief technology officer Daniel Doubrovkine, said the company believed that users’ names, emails, and IP addresses may have been among the data stolen.

“We have no evidence that commercial or financial information was involved, and to date we have not received reports from Artsy users of actual or attempted fraud as a result of this incident,” the alert stated. In the interest of “an over-abundance of caution,” it advised users to change their passwords on Artsy as well as other sites that might share similar passwords, while stating that the site stores only password hashes (a type of encryption used for protection).

A report published on Monday by the Register, a British news site devoted to technology (with the tagline “Biting the hand that feeds IT”), asserted that Artsy data was among that taken from 16 sites and put up for sale on the dark web. According to the report, data related to one million accounts on Artsy has been stolen as part of an operation that compromised 620 million accounts from sites including the video-messaging service Dubsmash and the online directory website Whitepages.

The report reads, in part, “Sample account records from the multi-gigabyte databases seen by The Register appear to be legit: they consist mainly of account holder names, email addresses, and passwords. These passwords are hashed, or one-way encrypted, and must therefore be cracked before they can be used.” It adds, “There are a few other bits of information, depending on the site, such as location, personal details, and social media authentication tokens. There appears to be no payment or bank card details in the sales listings.”

Reached for comment, a spokesperson for Artsy referred ARTnews to its original alert notice, which states that Artsy is investigating the matter.

ARTSY

Artsy, the multi-pronged online art startup, has laid off eight employees, with the cuts coming predominantly in the firm’s content-sales unit, which handles various forms of brand partnerships. Two of the eliminated positions were in the editorial department.

Simon Warren, Artsy’s senior director of communications, said the layoffs were part of the company’s efforts to focus on its art marketplace, which is “an increasingly meaningful source of revenue and key area of growth for our business.”

“A very modest single-digit reduction in our workforce will help support this increased investment in our marketplace . . . as well as our continued investment in Artsy’s editorial platform,” Warren said in an email. In all, the startup, which is headquartered in Lower Manhattan, employees about 230.

The moves come about a month after Sebastian Cwilich said that he would step down as president and COO later this year and transition to an advisory role.

When his departure was announced, Cwilich told the Art Newspaper that he was “leaving on a high,” and Artsy reported big jumps in users, gallery partners, and sales in 2018 versus the year prior.