[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/0H5A3940-1.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n
\n\tWhen Kasseem Dean (better known as Swizz Beatz) and Alicia Keys saw Kerry James Marshall\u2019s painting Past Times<\/em> (1997) sell at Sotheby\u2019s in 2018 for $21 million, making what the house quickly labeled \u201ca record for a living African American artist,\u201d they despaired that Marshall himself didn\u2019t see any of the upside from the sale. \u201cWe thought being a part of a milestone like that would be so advantageous to the artist who created the work,\u201d they wrote to ARTnews<\/em>. \u201cBut it wasn\u2019t.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThey committed to establishing a program to help living artists benefit from secondary-market sales. After seven years, they finally found a like-minded collaborator in Bonhams. \u201cThey were eager to partner with us on a game-changing idea,\u201d said the Deans. \u201cIt was a big decision for them as a company.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tToday Bonhams formally announces \u201c\u2018The Deans\u2019 Choice with Bonhams\u201d for its auctions in the US. The program launches this November with their 20th and 21st century art auctions. It lets the consignors of artworks by living artists choose to commit a percentage of their sale proceeds to the creator, and Bonhams offers a matching percentage from the buyer\u2019s premium. To participate in the program, artists must opt in via the Deans\u2019 Choice landing page on Bonhams website.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThere should be a mechanism whereby an artist can participate in the fruits of their labor during their lifetime,\u201d said CEO Seth Johnson, who committed to the initiative and tasked his US team with making it happen. The project involved numerous departments, including a significant effort by legal, spearheaded by general counsel Patricia Pernes.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tBonhams is calling this an \u201celective sale royalty.\u201d The minimum opt-in amount for consignors is 1 percent of the hammer price by lot or $500, whichever is greater. Then Bonhams will match the consignor\u2019s rate, calculated on the buyer\u2019s premium. For example, if the consignor designates a royalty rate of 7 percent of the hammer price, then Bonhams will match 7 percent of the buyer\u2019s premium for the lot.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tA good case study is 33-year-old Jad\u00e9 Fadojutimi\u2019s painting Ribbon of Thought<\/em> (2020), which hammered down at Bonhams 20th and 21st century art evening sale this past May at $220,000, or $279,900 with fees. Under the new program, if the consignor had opted in at a rate of 5 percent, the artist would have gotten $11,000 from the consignor and $2,950 from Bonhams.<\/p>\n \n\tArtist Allison Zuckerman, who has experienced firsthand what it\u2019s like to have one of her artworks sell at auction and become an outspoken advocate for resale agreements, calls the initiative \u201cgroundbreaking.\u201d \u201cIt begins to establish an important new norm,\u201d she said, of \u201crecognizing artists\u2019 enduring connection to the works they create and their place in those works\u2019 ongoing journeys.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cIn music, when we write a song, we receive royalties for the song,\u201d the Deans said. \u201cIt lasts our whole life, and it\u2019s even something we can leave to our children.\u201d They continued, \u201cMusic and art are brother and sister, so why are the rules different when it comes to ongoing compensation in the art space? This was a question we wanted to find an answer to, and that was the beginning of the idea of The Deans\u2019 Choice.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tArtists are among the few members of the creative community in the US who do not receive residual payments for the later resale of their works. This distinguishes the US from some 80 countries, including all member states of the EU, which have enacted national resale royalties for the benefit of artists.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThis international system, known as the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, provides for artists\u2019 rights to endure for the lifetime of the artist, plus 70 years postmortem. When a work by a living artist sells at auction in the EU, for example, royalties are tiered: 4% up to \u20ac50,000, 3% between \u20ac50,000.01 and \u20ac200,000, and so on, and capped at \u20ac12,500.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tLawmakers in the US have repeatedly introduced the American Royalties Too (ART) Act\u2014most recently updated in 2025 as H.R.4017 by Representative Jerrold Nadler\u2014to mandate a 5 percent royalty (capped up to $50,000) on secondary market sales over $5,000, but it has not yet passed into law.<\/p>\n \n\tTheodore Feder, founder and president of Artists Rights Society, which represents over 200,000 visual artists worldwide, congratulated Bonhams for \u201ctaking a vital first step in inaugurating a system of artists\u2019 resale royalties,\u201d as he wrote in a statement to ARTnews<\/em>. He added, \u201cBonhams\u2019s initiative, however important as a first step and for which ARS is grateful, goes but part way into remedying this situation in the U.S. As proposed, the resale royalty only applies if the seller gives his or her consent thereto. It should apply to all eligible work and should not be restricted to the lifetime of the artist.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tBoth Bonhams and the Deans hope this initiative is the first step in wider adoption of resale royalties for visual artists. \u201cWe\u2019re hoping living artists getting compensated from resale becomes the industry norm,\u201d wrote the Deans.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/market\/kasseem-dean-alicia-keys-bonhams-secondary-market-program-1234797562\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/0H5A3940-1.jpg?w=1024″] When Kasseem Dean (better known as Swizz Beatz) and Alicia Keys saw Kerry James Marshall\u2019s painting Past Times (1997) sell at Sotheby\u2019s in 2018 for $21 million, making what the house quickly labeled \u201ca record for a living African American artist,\u201d they despaired that Marshall himself didn\u2019t see any of the upside […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-2136006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2136006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2136006"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2136006\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2136006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2136006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2136006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}