Christie’s, a 259-year-old auction house, got a taste of the good old days when a Microsoft outage forced its staff onto phones and in-person contact as emails were no longer an option. All this commotion and de-digitization, albeit temporary, took place days before $1 billion of art was set to cross the block in New York. The only saving grace was that it wasn’t just Christie’s that was affected by the worldwide Microsoft failure, but also Phillips and Heritage Auctions. Undoubtedly, it happened at the worst possible moment for the British auction house, which is preparing to sell roughly $1 billion of art at its marquee November 17 auctions.
The tech failure hampered many users from sending or receiving Outlook messages, and it disrupted Teams, Copilot, and other Microsoft 365 services. As a result, the days leading up to the auction that are spent taking confirmations via emails to collectors, advisers, and consultants, and chasing paperwork, came to a standstill. To keep the sale on track, staff turned to other ways of reaching clients. In addition, a notice on Christie’s website told visitors that the auction house could not receive emails, and directed them to telephone numbers instead.
According to Artnet, the house’s 20th-century auction on Tuesday night is the largest of New York’s $2 billion auction week, with an estimate of $544.9 million to $789.8 million. Wassily Kandinsky’s Betonte Ecken from 1922 to 1923 and Gustav Klimt’s landscape Litzlbergkeller from 1915 to 1916 lead the sale, each estimated at $60 million to $80 million. The Kandinsky piece is a geometric Bauhaus-era masterpiece that once belonged to Solomon R. Guggenheim, while the Klimt is a rare vision of Lake Attersee returning to auction for the first time in nearly three decades after setting a record at the Serge Sabarsky estate sale in 1997.
A Christie’s spokesperson said, “The Microsoft outage is certainly inconvenient for everyone, but this is a relationship business, and we have many ways to be in touch with our stakeholders. Our galleries are crowded, and the outage hasn’t dampened any enthusiasm. Our sales continue uninterrupted.” Ultimately, there is an irony in watching a multibillion-dollar global art market scramble when email goes down. Thankfully, all the bidding action takes place not over email but a working telephone line, an enthusiastic millionaire bidder, and a wooden gavel.
