After fallout, Sotheby’s seeks to fix ‘glitch’ in its NFT sale by including more women

Sotheby’s has reached out to artists involved in a recent row over its scheduled online sale of Glitch art, which was postponed earlier this week, following mounting pressure from the online community over its lack of works by artists identifying as female.

The sale "Natively Digital: Glitch-ism" was due to run between 24-31 March but fell through following a flurry of tweets by artists including OONA and Stellabelle, calling out the lack of work by women in the sale. Hours later, the artist Patrick Amadon confirmed in a tweet that he was pulling his work from the sale and that: "While I believe it was a genuine oversight and the team means well, the lack of representation is a serious issue and we need to address this in our space."

In a statement, the auction house said it was pausing [the sale to] "re-dress the imbalance in representation within the sale and will restart with a more equitable and diverse group of artists at a later date". The original sale consisted of around 20 lots with a total presale estimate of $560,000 to $870,000.

One artist, Rosa Menkman, who raised concerns that the auction house had used an image of her work in the auction’s overview, without including her work in the sale has confirmed that since the postponement, “Sotheby's did get in touch with me to see how we can move forward and possibly be part of the auction. It entirely depends on what gets changed and what they actually offer.”

The broader conversation online has been documented and publicised on a substack page collated by Stellabelle and includes tweets by the artist Dawnia Darstone (letsglitchit) who claims she was asked to offer analysis for the original sale without being offered financial compensation.

The incident is part of a broader concern around the lack of female representation, which has long been documented in physical art markets, is making its way into the crypto sphere. A study by Art Tactic, published late last year, claimed that just 5% of money made by NFT sales went to artists identifying as females.

"I wouldn't stop at NFT art," Amadon says. “Women and non-binary across the entire spectrum of the art world have their contributions marginalised and their prices suffer for it and because their prices suffer, they receive less attention and we're back to the cycle again.”