Scott Niichel is Vice Chairman and Head of Middle Market for Modern & Contemporary Art, Americas. While a senior specialist of Impressionist & Modern Art with twenty years of experience in the industry, he also oversees a broad cross-section of the fine art division in New York, including the Modern & Contemporary Day, Curated, and Discoveries sale teams as well as the American Art, Latiꦛn American Art, Prints & Multiples and Photographs departments. He is widely regarded as a trusted advisor to private collectors, estates and museums, especially throughout the United States, Canada and Japan, and sources consignments for Sotheby’s Modern & Contemporary Evening and Day Auctions.

He has directed more than $1 billion in art sales during his tenure at Sotheby’s, overseeing transactions both at auction and privately for major collections and estates around the world. He also leads auction teams generating more than $500 million in annual sales. Recent career highlights include overseeing the landmark MGM Picasso sale at the Bellagio in Las Vegas, which achieved over $108 million in 2021, and his representation of the underbidder for Claude Monet’s Nymphéas from the estate of Sydell Miller, which sold for $65.5 million in November 2024 after a 17-minute bidding꧙ battle.

Prior to joining Sotheby’s, Scott held positions at the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. He received degreesಌ in Fine Arts and Russian Studies from Amherst College, where he focused on Western European Modern Art and its influence on Eastern European Art and its diaspora. He began his Sotheby's career as a specialist of Russian paintings♉, and in 2012 pivoted to focus on Western European paintings, drawings and sculpture as a specialist of Impressionist & Modern Art, overseeing that department from 2019-2022 before taking on leadership of the entire Middle Market division for Modern & Contemporary Art.