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Nigel Freeman has built a strong position in the African-American auction market through his sales at Swann Galleries beginning in 2007. Over the last dozen years, Freeman has increased the size and volume of his sales as African American artists have grown in prominence throughout the Contemporary art market.

The scholar Harold Holzer has spent his life collecting more than 700 paintings and other material related to the 16th president.

The “Illustration Art” sale emerged five years ago, when these original works proved increasingly popular in sales dedicated to illustrated books. “It was always a runaway, gangbuster section,” Ms. von der Linn said.

In 2007 Swann Auction Galleries in New York held the first auction in US history devoted entirely to the works of African-American artists. “At the time there were only a few artists who had any real auction presence,” says Nigel Freeman, founder of the house’s African-American fine art department. “It reinforced a short-sightedness. If there were no auction records, work had no auction value. It was a chicken and egg situation.”

Nicholas Lowry, president of Swann Auction Galleries and the longtime poster specialist and appraiser for PBS’s Antiques Roadshow, also thinks the posters are ineffective. “They will not sway social discourse. They’ll go up on campus, maybe infuriate people and spark a discussion. But it won’t be about the posters themselves; it will be about posting them.”

"On February 14 US auction house Swann Galleries, based in New York, held its latest photography sale. It came 65 years to the day since its very first sale in this field. The 1952 sale – the first American auction dedicated to photography – included a collection of more than 1000 plates from British photographer Eadweard Muybridge's pioneering work Animal Locomotion from 1887. It sold for $250 back then. On February 14, 2017, the top lot was...a collection of plates from Animal Locomotion."

"Psychology actually is a big part of auctions, and a good auctioneer can gauge the tenor of the room. Mr. Lowry believes auctions tap into our most primal instincts." Watch the accompanying Facebook Live video.

Ten years ago, collectors who were focused on acquiring African-American art primarily supported the category. Now we also have buyers of specific artists and subcategories across the spectrum of 20th-century art. The result is an extensive network of private and institutional clients across the nation and abroad. The collector base has considerably broadened with the rising value of postwar African-American abstraction, particularly the second generation of abstract artists active in the 1970s.

"Swann's sale of printed and manuscript African-Americana is a treasure trove that includes a map of all the hottest night clubs in Harlem in 1932."

"The Bay Psalm Book, with roots in Salem, Massachusetts, led a first-rate Americana sale."

Swann President and Director of Posters, Nicholas D. Lowry says, "The best Art Deco posters are the ones that sing a visual song to the machine age: the rise of the ocean liner or the train, for example."

"There is still so much to learn and see and I find that I am often encountering brand new images which completely amaze me," says Swann President and Director of the Vintage Posters department, Nicholas D. Lowry.

A brief history of monoprints and monotypes from Edgar Degas to Tracey Emin. Swann director of Prints & Drawings Todd Weyman advises, "if you come across monotypes by artists you appreciate, pursue them as acquisitions, as they're the best of both worlds from a collecting standpoint, being both printed yet unique."

Egon Schiele's watercolor, Schlafender Mann, sells at Swann for $905,000.

"A lot of modern art was created to be hated," said Nicholas Lowry, president and principal auctioneer for Swann Galleries. "Travel posters were made to be loved–to catch your eye as you walk by."

"Barkley L. Hendricks's bold, large-scale white-on-white portrait Steve, 1976, in oil, acrylic, and Magna on canvas, doubled its $180,000 high estimate to land $365,000, reinforcing the house's dominance in this category by setting a new record for a painting by the artist for the fifth time since 2009."

Swann's February 2015 sale of Vintage Posters brought prices that established a market well beyond the walls of the dormitory, as the Antiques Trade Gazette reports.

The music, he said, “is very idealistic, it’s stately and full of dignity.” One advertisement on the Swann pages for sale recommends ragtime as an anxiety suppressant, which can “scatter the brooding fears of troubles that are to be but never come.”

“Some travel posters show you what you’ll see,” said Nicholas D. Lowry, “Others show you what you’ll feel or present you with a fantasy of who you’d like to be.”

International Review of African American Art covers the top influencers in the African American Art Market, among those listed is Swann's very own Nigel Freeman, Director of African-American Fine Art.