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Leslie Hindman Auctioneers, one of the top such galleries in the country, plans to open a branch in Milwaukee on East Mason Street, adding to the artsy ambience of that area of town. Hindman is based in Chicago and also opened a branch in Naples, Fla. This will be the third location for the auction gallery.

Milwaukee has been good to Hindman. In 1991, her auction gallery made worldwide headlines when she sold a previously unknown Van Gogh painting found in a Bayside farmhouse for $1.43 million. “It was a record for Chicago, or perhaps anywhere in the U.S. outside of Manhattan,” news reports said.

Leslie Hindman (photo by Gulf Coast Business Review)

Now Hindman is banking on Milwaukee as a good place for a satellite facility. She is negotiating a lease with developer Joel Lee for space at 414 E. Mason St.

“We’ve always done a lot of business in Milwaukee,” Hindman says. “It is an old, old city, and there are other old, old cities in Wisconsin … It’s a wonderful city, I like going there. Especially with Schrager no longer in business, I thought it would be time, and I’m negotiating a lease now.” (Schrager Auction Galleries closed last May after more than a half century in business, leaving a void in the marketplace.)

Hindman cites the breadth of Milwaukee’s collections and the thousands of once-invisible, ordinary folks with extraordinary possessions that have recently come to light thanks to cultural phenomena such as E-Bay, Antiques Roadshow and even her own television appearances.

Her firm is the go-to choice when institutions like the Milwaukee Art Museum and Marquette University’s Haggerty Museum of Art choose to deaccession their holdings.

“Do you know (Haggerty Director) Wally Mason?” Hindman asks. “I love him!”

An upcoming sale at Hindman will feature many paintings and prints collected by the late Peg Bradley. “They are from the Garden,” Hindman says, referring to what is now the Lynden Sculpture Garden in River Hills (but the works are from the old house on the grounds). The sale will benefit the garden.

Hindman got her start with Sotheby’s in the late ‘70s as an assistant earning $8,700 a year and started her own auction house in 1982. She found a niche with mid-level collectors and sellers, like the Van Gogh owners. Still anonymous, they are described only as an upper middle class, retired suburban couple who inherited a still life of flowers from a relative who had immigrated to Milwaukee from Switzerland in the ‘40s. (That probably narrows it done to thousands of couples in the metro area.)

the discovered van gogh: vase with flowers

Hindman’s instincts for showmanship, including a sale held at Comiskey Park, helped bring her firm attention and business. It was the largest house in Chicago and fifth-largest in the nation when she sold it to Sotheby’s for a reported $5 million and a five-year contract in 1997.

Sotheby’s wanted to court the middle class market, but the effort did not succeed. So Hindman reopened the business under her name when the contract with Sotheby’s expired in 2003.

“They didn’t want to handle the $20,000 items,” Hindman says of the elite auction house, while she can’t wait to get her hands on them here.

But why the bricks-and-mortar approach in the era of electronic auctions? Hindman says her business model integrates the best of the old-school and the new. An increasing number of her auction sales result from electronic bids. But a physical presence, along with a professional staff that can better evaluate items and an appraisal service and physical showroom offer an inducement to collectors and sellers.

Hindman seems eager to embrace the city’s downtown. Her space would be across the street from the Pfister and Metro hotels, and on the same block as the building that houses George Watts & Son and DeLind Fine Arts.

“I love Watts and I love DeLind!,” she exclaims. “The synergy is wonderful – we’re by the Pfister – there are many synergies. We weren’t planning on announcing this until July. But now that you know, we hope to open in September with a big party.”

Hindman’s arrival is good news to Bill DeLind. “I see this as a big plus for me and look forward to having them as neighbors,” he says.

DeLind says Hindman visited his gallery and also met with Sam Watts. “She spoke of perhaps some sort of joint festive party … a ‘welcome to the neighborhood party,’” De Lind said. He added that Hindman’s move here “is prompted by the closing of Schraeger and the large amount of business she gets from Milwaukee, both buying and selling.”

Hindman’s move to Milwaukee was also saluted by Janice Kuhn of Chestnut Court Appraisals.

It is Kuhn who brought the Van Gogh to Hindman’s attention after her son John discovered it while inspecting the Bayside home. (John Kuhn, now a Milwaukee real estate executive, served as a “spotter” for Hindman at the time, discovering hidden treasures.)

“Milwaukee will be a good location for Leslie,” Janice Kuhn tells NewsBuzz. “There are so many people who originally settled here in the 19th century who had a keen interest in the decorative arts.”

She vividly remembers the Van Gogh discovery. “At first, her staff never really believed it was a Van Gogh, and they would laugh about it. I gave them the address of the Van Gogh Museum, and they sent it off for verification, and it came back authentic. But for a while, they would joke, ‘Well, John, how many Van Goghs did you find today?’”

Hindman’s arrival is also greeted with enthusiasm by Ken Marx, the owner of the Army Navy Surplus Shop on West Wisconsin Avenue and a well-known collector of Wisconsin art who has been profiled in Milwaukee Magazine.

“This is good news,” says Marx, whose eye and knowledge of the art scene is legendary. “I’d like to work for her in my spare time.”

“Really?” says Hindman. “Give me his name. If you know anybody in Milwaukee interested in this business, I’m hiring.”

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