The Tamesis
Kimberly Pirtle, Sotheby’s’ fast-rising auctioneer, has left the firm to start her own firm, Gabriel Advisory Group, which aims to bridge arts consulting and cultural philanthropy.
Pirtle, who worked on Sotheby’s collectors team and quickly moved into the auction house, said the idea came from ongoing disagreements she encountered with her clients. At the auction house, the focus is clear: transactions. But many of the collectors she works with are thinking about broader questions—how artists, institutions, and their collections fit into the larger ecosystem.
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“They do it on purpose,” she said of her clients, describing collectors who want to support artists and institutions rather than just buy objects. She found that the idea didn’t quite fit into the structure of an auction house.
The Gabriel Advisory Group was her attempt to formalize a different approach. The firm operates in the primary and secondary markets, advising collectors on acquisitions while guiding philanthropic strategy and institutional engagement. For some clients, this means handling auction and gallery relationships. For others, it means developing a charitable giving strategy or working more closely with museums and foundations.
The model reflects Pirtle’s own path. In addition to her work at Sotheby’s, she is a frequent presence on the charity auction circuit, working with organizations such as the Pratt Institute, the Bronx Museum of the Arts, the Queens Museum, and the Gordon Parks Foundation. That experience exposed a diverse set of needs—fundraising strategies, donor cultivation, and long-term institutional support—that extend far beyond the auction floor.
“I started to find that it was often the same people,” Pirtle said, referring to those active in the benefit auctions she hosted. “The most ardent collectors are also deeply involved in philanthropy.”
This overlap is where she saw an opportunity. Rather than viewing collections and donations as separate channels, Gabriel Consulting positions them as part of a single, more integrated practice.
Pirtle also serves as a VIP consultant for Frieze Art Fair Inc. She describes this relationship as one that gives her real-time visibility into how decisions, especially in the primary market, are made.
Recently, advisors have begun to expand their remit from acquisitions to estate planning, collection management and institutional strategy, and Pirtle believes her pitches should tie these threads together rather than having them pieced together by different experts.
For now, the company is small, and intentionally so. But the goal is clear: to create a practice that reflects how collectors actually operate, rather than how the market has traditionally been divided.
