Phyllis Kao didn’t enter the public sale world quietly. She walked onto the podium and altered the expectations of what authority in that area can look and sound like. In an business that has lengthy coded energy as British, masculine and emotionally impartial, Kao has constructed a unique mannequin of command: theatrical when it must be, scholarly when it needs to be and absolutely, unapologetically herself.
Her intuition for holding consideration started lengthy earlier than she ever known as bids. She grew up acting on the violin and understood early on what it means to maintain focus and pressure over time. The self-discipline and the stagecraft translated seamlessly. “If you’ll ask folks to hearken to you for 2 or three hours, you must hold them engaged,” she informed Observer. “I grew up performing, in order that half was at all times pure to me.” However Kao didn’t arrive to be decorative or palatable. She arrived to run the room.
The start of her profession was unintentional. Contemporary out of Columbia, the place she earned her bachelor’s in Chinese language historical past, she took a brief job at a small Northern California public sale home. As a result of she spoke Mandarin, she was requested to take telephone bids on six-figure Chinese language oil work throughout a booming market. She received a number of works, and that short-term job became a full-time one. When she was later invited to take the podium herself, she didn’t hesitate. “If you end up that younger, you might be too silly to be scared,” she mentioned. She known as her very first sale bilingually. “No one requested me to promote bilingually. It simply felt pure, and the viewers lit up.”
What separated Kao from her earliest years was not precocity, however fearlessness. She understood the room not as a static place the place protocol is adopted, however as a website of efficiency the place psychology, pacing and charisma can decide the result. She has been at Sotheby’s for near a decade now, and as we speak she is senior vp of consumer technique, navigating the high-stakes intersection of enterprise, collectors and scholarship.
However the artwork world first started being attentive to her presence on the rostrum in November 2023, when she anchored the Now Night Public sale in the course of the fall marquee week. The sale went white glove and launched her into a brand new tier of recognition inside the business. That night time additionally launched her visible language to a wider viewers. Kao wore a silver Armani jacket that belonged to her mom. On the rostrum, it learn not as adornment however as continuity. She has household in Taiwan and grew up between cultural worlds, and clothes for her is a manner of folding historical past into the skilled stage.
Her visibility intensified once more when she appeared within the viral Alexis Bittar marketing campaign, enjoying an auctioneer in a satirical bidding scene. It was a crossover second that signaled one thing new: the world outdoors the artwork business understood the archetype of the auctioneer, and in that world, she already learn because the face of it.
Then got here the Apex stegosaurus sale in July 2024, which pushed her far past the partitions of the artwork market and made her unmistakably seen. A worldwide public that doesn’t usually watch night gross sales instantly knew her face, voice and cadence. The momentum from that second helped propel Kao right into a 12 months of heightened cultural consideration, culminating in her being named to the New York Instances’ Most Trendy of 2024 record. “Being within the New York Instances was actually life-changing,” she mentioned. “Everybody opens the Instances all around the globe. I used to be getting messages from folks in so many alternative industries—folks I had by no means spoken to, with fully completely different alternatives, inquiries and congratulations. I had not skilled something like that outdoors the public sale neighborhood earlier than.”
Her rise displays the evolution of the public sale world itself. Within the post-COVID period, night gross sales have develop into broadcast occasions as a lot as market mechanisms. The rostrum is not only a platform however a stage designed for cameras, pacing charts and viewers who could also be watching on TikTok, Instagram or through livestream. In different phrases, energy isn’t personal anymore. That mentioned, Kao didn’t emerge as a result of auctions grew to become a spectacle. Auctions changing into a spectacle merely made seen what she had already been doing.
For a lot of the fashionable public sale period, authority on the podium was virtually a monoculture. Jussi Pylkkänen, Oliver Barker, Adrian Meyer and Robert C. Woolley outlined the skilled archetype, and the business handled that cadence because the sound of credibility itself. To be taken significantly was to emulate them. However the terrain is altering. Helena Newman has led at Sotheby’s Europe for greater than twenty years, and Sarah Kruger has develop into a cornerstone at Phillips. Danielle So and, extra lately, YüGe Wang at Christie’s have helped reshape the expectations of each the room and the viewers. Kao is among the shift’s defining faces.
She has noticed the transition from contained in the establishment. “I feel the entire world has shifted since I left college,” she mentioned. “And it has been child steps all the way in which. However once I go searching and I have a look at our auctioneer roster right here at Sotheby’s New York, we’ve parity. I don’t assume that was the case ten years in the past. There have been so many incremental small steps in the suitable course.” Progress is actual, she emphasised, however not whole. “Now we have seen progress, however after all, there are nonetheless outdated habits and outdated biases.” And he or she is evident concerning the stakes of visibility. “Illustration issues, however talent issues too. You want each. It can not simply be that there are extra girls on the podium. Now we have to be extraordinary. And we’re.”
Excellence, for Kao, isn’t a efficiency trick. Her preparation for every sale is intensive and exact. She excursions the exhibition repeatedly, first with specialists throughout classes, then once more alone. She memorizes her remarks so she will communicate with no teleprompter and modify in actual time. She warms up her voice and rehearses her pacing. She eats protein earlier than a sale to maintain stamina. She meditates and rehearses her mindset simply as rigorously as her traces. She carries talismans in her pocket and asks for a selected phrase from her mentor earlier than she goes up. “I like to listen to from my mentor earlier than I am going up,” she mentioned. “It’s superstition.” The glamour of the night may be what viewers see, however it rests on a construction of self-discipline that’s invisible by design.
Vogue is a part of that construction, and Kao makes use of it to direct consideration, set tone and construct narrative. “I’ve at all times cherished style. I used to be a choosy dresser from the time I might dress,” she mentioned. She collects classic and wears items inherited from relations. Designers now method her to decorate her for gross sales, galas and award ceremonies as a result of they perceive that the digicam is watching her as carefully because the collectors are. Through the Might 2025 sale, she wore a Jonathan Cohen go well with whose palette and gestural strokes echoed the Monet anchoring the night.
But regardless of her visibility, Kao doesn’t method her profession as a branding train. “I’ve by no means been a strategist for my very own profession,” she mentioned. “My philosophy has been to not plan an excessive amount of and simply drift. If a window opens, soar by way of it.” That openness has been her compass, however what sustains her is inner somewhat than exterior. “Belief your self in each sense. Belief your intestine, belief your skill, belief your potential, and belief that it’ll work out in case you do all these issues.”
Kao’s ascent is a cultural recalibration. Auctioneering has lengthy been a white-shoe boys’ membership constructed on the fantasy that energy is impartial and cash is a matter of style. Kao walks into that system with allure, fluency, technique, efficiency intuition and the form of charisma that doesn’t apologize for itself. She isn’t just calling bids. She is shaping the room, redirecting want, and rewriting what authority appears like on the podium. We lastly have a number one girl the viewers actively desires to look at, and the business’s greatest secret is that it wanted her lengthy earlier than it realized it.
The public sale world isn’t identified for speedy evolution. Its energy constructions are outdated, its hierarchies deeply rooted and its traditions immune to interruption. Kao has constructed a unique mannequin from inside. She has not pleaded for area. She has taken it. She has proven that authority doesn’t require erasure, that charisma doesn’t preclude rigor and that visibility can come from mastery somewhat than mystique. The podium has at all times belonged to whoever can management the room. Proper now, that’s Phyllis Kao.
Extra Arts interviews
