Wednes­day, Feb­ru­ary 1, 2012

The first day of my Princetern­ship at Christie’s Art Auc­tion House  was extremely eye-opening, excit­ing and of course, busy. I woke up early on Wednes­day, Feb­ru­ary 1, and boarded a 7:15 am train at Prince­ton Sta­tion and headed into New York City. I found it slightly nerve-wracking that I was play­ing the role of a com­muter for the rest of the week: I was dressed in a suit, equipped with office essen­tials and car­ry­ing a large cof­fee. Once I got to the city, I was a part of the morn­ing rush. I quickly found my way to the sub­way sta­tion that took me to Rock­e­feller Cen­ter where Christie’s was located. After enter­ing the build­ing, I checked in with secu­rity and headed upstairs to meet our alum George McNeely’83’s assis­tant, Alex. She was incred­i­bly per­son­able, which made me feel more com­fort­able in the office envi­ron­ment on my first day. Luck­ily, my first day of the intern­ship was along­side Nick, another Prince­ton stu­dent who began his shad­ow­ing two days ear­lier than I. He was able to show me the ropes before I was expected to work alone.

After being intro­duced to mem­bers of the com­pany that I would be work­ing closely with, I dove straight into the major project I was assigned. Because Mr. McNeely was in charge of over­see­ing Christie’s involve­ment in the Latin Amer­i­can art mar­ket, he gave me the task of ana­lyz­ing data per­tain­ing to Latin Amer­i­can clien­tele. My job was to search for trends in the buy­ing habits of each coun­try in the region. These trends would assist the com­pany mov­ing for­ward. I enjoyed this task, because I felt like my find­ings would be impor­tant; they were a real con­tri­bu­tion to the com­pany and its world-wide endeavors.

I was anx­ious to see more of the com­pany after the first cou­ple of hours at the com­puter. Alex took us on a tour of the build­ing and explained the company’s fun­da­men­tal aspects. Nick and I toured the spe­cialty depart­ments– depart­ments that are focused on art from a cer­tain region of the world or even a spe­cific coun­try– as well as the major show­room. There was an auc­tion cur­rently going on and we stayed for a bit to watch how things worked. The auc­tion itself was dif­fer­ent than I expected. It was incred­i­bly reserved, calm and cool. Amer­i­can Inte­ri­ors were being sold for var­i­ous prices to peo­ple who came from all over the city and, quite pos­si­bly, all over the world.

Next, it was lunch time. Alex took Nick and I to sev­eral places around the build­ing in Rock­e­feller Cen­ter. There were busi­ness women and men scat­tered every­where. Some were headed for a quick sand­wich and salad, while oth­ers took more time to dine leisurely with a co-worker at a cafe. Upon return­ing to work, I con­tin­ued my work on the project. Time passed incred­i­bly quickly and before I knew it, it was time to return to Princeton.

Thurs­day, Feb­ru­ary 2, 2012 & Fri­day, Feb­ru­ary 3, 2012

My sec­ond and third days were tai­lored more to my per­sonal inter­ests in the com­pany as well as the project. When I arrived at the office, I used Excel to graph client annual totals in an attempt to make sense of the Latin Amer­i­can client data. Shortly after, I had a one-on-one meet­ing with Mr. McNeely. We chat­ted about his back­ground, art and Christie’s in gen­eral. I found it incred­i­bly inter­est­ing to hear about his time at Prince­ton and the career path that fol­lowed. His per­spec­tive was help­ful in sort­ing through my own thoughts about my future in the busi­ness world. Mr. McNeely was kind, open and accept­ing of my ideas. His pleas­ant dis­po­si­tion made me feel wel­come in the Christie’s com­mu­nity. I was not just an out­sider look­ing in. My pres­ence was rec­og­nized and respected.

George McNeely, fel­low Princetern Nick, and Lexi

The last two days at Christie’s flew by. Before I knew it, it was lunch time. Alex and I went under­ground to grab a sand­wich. Over lunch, Alex and I dis­cussed her back­ground in col­lege and I dis­cov­ered that she was new to the busi­ness world too. Just out of col­lege, Alex took the job at Christie’s to increase her involve­ment in the art world. I enjoyed hear­ing her story.

I was able to sit in on an Events Com­mit­tee Meet­ing later in the after­noon. This was def­i­nitely one of my favorite parts of my time at Christie’s. As some­one inter­ested in event plan­ning and coor­di­na­tion, lis­ten­ing to Mr. McNeely’s co-workers dis­cuss var­i­ous invi­ta­tions they received that requested a Christie’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive was very intrigu­ing. The meet­ing made me aware of how large busi­nesses treat major events as an adver­tis­ing oppor­tu­nity– some­thing that will pro­mote the company’s name and rep­u­ta­tion. I found it fas­ci­nat­ing to be a fly on the wall. As I lis­tened, I was also able to pick up how mem­bers of Christie’s dis­cuss and pro­pose events. The pre­sen­ta­tion of each event was very impor­tant, for the employee pitch­ing the event had to be per­sua­sive and give good rea­sons as to why Christie’s should participate.

As the days came to a close, I worked furi­ously on the project. I made lists, graphs and charts that I thought might be help­ful to Alex and Mr. McNeely in their quest to expand and strengthen the Latin Amer­i­can art mar­ket. Before the end of the day, I met with Mr. McNeely to show him my work. To my sur­prise, he was very pleased with what I had done and planned to use my find­ings in future meet­ings. I was beyond flat­tered and proud that I had made a con­tri­bu­tion. Although small, my con­tri­bu­tion was able to leave a tiny mark on the com­pany and hope­fully leave them with a pleas­ant view of Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity. Over­all, my expe­ri­ence could not have been more ful­fill­ing. Not only did I meet exec­u­tives from one of the most promi­nent art auc­tion houses in the world, I was able to get an inside look at a major com­pany to see how it runs on a daily basis. I felt so lucky that I had the oppor­tu­nity to rep­re­sent Prince­ton in the big city!