Tim Klingender, an art dealer and Sotheby’s Aboriginal art consultant was discovered dead in the water off the Sydney Heads promontory.
The Australian art world is in disbelief. The body of Klingender was recovered by maritime police on July 20 following an apparent yachting accident in which another person is still missing.
Klingender, aged 59, was Sotheby’s senior consultant for Australian art. In May, he was in New York to supervise the auction house’s fourth auction of Aboriginal art. When he returned to Sydney, he indulged his passion for deep-sea fishing and whale viewing along the Sydney coastline.
His departure will leave a void in Sotheby’s international hierarchy and market expertise, according to Robert Bleakley, the proprietor of Sotheby’s former Australian base. Sotheby’s operates no longer in Australia. Bleakley states to The Art Newspaper, “I don’t believe anyone can fill the void there.”
Bleakley states that in the 1980s, Klingender, a youthful graduate of the University of Melbourne, was hired by Sotheby’s and became instrumental in establishing the secondary market for Aboriginal art.
“He had a genuine appreciation for art and a relationship with Indigenous Australians. He was present and profoundly concerned,” he continues.
Klingender became a dominant force in the market for Indigenous art. According to John Albrecht, chairman of the Australian auction house Leonard Joel, Klingender “literally conceived and designed the ethical secondary market for Indigenous art in Australia.”
According to sources consulted by The Art Newspaper, Klingender was renowned for his ethical position, commitment to research, and emphasis on provenance.
Luke Scholes, who worked for the Papunya Tula Artists organization when he encountered Klingender 20 years ago, asserts that Klingender was “unwavering” in his commitment to morality.
Scholes, who is now a research scholar at Deakin University in Melbourne, asserts,
“He set a very high standard, and it is now up to everyone else to uphold it.” “He cannot be replaced. No one possesses the vitality, passion, knowledge, and audacity to continue advocating on a global scale.”
Annette Larkin, an art consultant in Sydney, stated that Klingender’s knowledge of Indigenous art and its market was unparalleled. “He was also knowledgeable about barks and boards,” Larkin explains. “He significantly developed and comprehended the market for boards in the 1970s.”
Klingender established Sotheby’s Aboriginal art department in 1996 and began transporting its sales highlights to New York, London, and Paris before auctions in Australia. He established Tim Klingender Fine Art in 2009.
Between 2011 and 2013, he worked for Bonhams as a senior consultant. In this capacity, he oversaw the historic sale of the Laverty Collection of Contemporary Australian Art, which toured London and New York City prior to the auction.
His annual New York sale concluded, and Klingender posted on Instagram on 31 May,
“Such amazing art, vitality, old friends, and new friends every year… And now, for the past 26 years, I’ve had the responsibility and privilege of exhibiting some of the finest Australian Indigenous art in a metropolis unlike any other. Can’t wait to return home and go sailing.”
His wife, Skye McCardle, and their two adolescent daughters survive him.
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