Arcual Life: Meet Our Senior Comms and Education Manager, Eleanor!

Tell us about your professional background?

Hello Arcual Life! I come from a creative background originally - I studied English Literature alongside Study Abroad on the Renaissance in Florence. I was always interested in a career connecting my passions, writing, art, and more recently, technology.

When I graduated from university, I wanted to gain as much experience as I could in different areas of the art market. This included internships writing about art at The Sunday Times, cataloguing at Lyon and Turnbull auctioneers in Edinburgh, and creating partnerships at AXA Art Insurance in the city. I then joined Sotheby’s European Operations team and was lucky to have a brilliant, meticulously organised first boss. I learned from the start of my career how important communication, effective cross team collaboration, and making joyful personal connections with your colleagues is, to running a successful business.

My career at Sotheby’s coincided with the take off in social media marketing. From Operations, I applied for a newly created role as Sotheby’s Social Media Manager when I was 24. The following years were a fast paced blur of Youtube, Instagram, and Twitter, of evening auctions, brand collaborations, and content creation around the very best artworks, specialists, and collectors in the world. It was an experience I will never forget.

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What was a career highlight?

After Sotheby’s, I wanted to gain experience running my own department. I took up the role of Head of Communications at Colnaghi, the oldest commercial art gallery in the world. Working to tell the stories of beautiful paintings and antiquities spanning the history of art (a highlight included a rediscovered Caravaggio) alongside creating partnerships and events with museums, conservators, and foundations in Venice, Florence, and Madrid, was truly special.

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What drew you to Arcual?

Having worked in the commercial art world on both the auction house and gallery side, I understood how important, but also how tenuous, an art work’s provenance could be without effective documentation and record keeping. I was aware that blockchain technology offered an opportunity to safeguard an artwork’s provenance in an immutable way, and I also missed working with the primary art market. The opportunity to join Arcual and contribute to building the next generation of digital infrastructure for the artworld, was one I could not miss.

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What does a typical day look like for you and the team?

The Marketing team is spread out between London and Zurich; we align every day to ensure our projects fit the overall strategy of the company. In my role, I collaborate with colleagues in each of our various teams, including CX, Blockchain, Ecosystem, Product and Engineering, to create educational content which is topical and focused around our products and mission. This content must also serve to engage and grow our community across Arcual’s social media platforms, website, and newsletter.

I also oversee Arcual’s media relations, which includes managing a communications agency, guiding interviews with Arcual’s leadership team, setting up journalist meetings, and directing photo shoots. My role is busier around art fairs and other key art world moments, but I am lucky to have great colleagues and we help each other find the balance in our workloads.

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What is your favourite thing about culture at Arcual?

What I love most about Arcual, is our strong culture of togetherness and interconnectivity. Despite the distance between colleagues working in Berlin, London, and Zurich, we regularly come together to share our favourite artists in All-Hands, which books we can’t stop thinking about (we have a book group), our favourite travel memories, and the food we most enjoy cooking (shout out to our international supper club). We also all want to contribute positively to the world we live in (Arcual is an active member of the Gallery Climate Coalition) and we have an engaged Green Team.

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What would you be, if you weren’t Arcual’s Senior Comms and Education Manager?

I would be living in Florence studying Renaissance Art History, looking at frescoes late into the night, and eating ice cream.

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Where do you see Arcual in two years’ time?

Arcual is building digital and blockchain products which are shaping a more equitable and fair art market. I think over the next two years, we will continue to show the art world how powerful these tools can be, opening up new possibilities for everyone in the ecosystem to benefit. The future is exciting.

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Stay tuned for more from Arcual Life!

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