Gender, Ethnicity, and the Gavel: Intersectional Pricing in the New York Art Auction Market, 2015–2024

Prior research has documented gender- and ethnicity-associated pricing differentials in art auction markets, but has generally treated these dimensions as independent and additive. This paper applies intersectionality theory to test that assumption directly. Drawing on 68,672 auction transactions at Christie's, Sotheby's, and Phillips in New York from 2015 through 2024, representing approximately $31.7 billion in hammer value across 2,631 unique artists, we estimate hedonic pricing models with explicit gender-by-ethnicity interaction terms, race-disaggregated specifications, difference-in-differences models anchored to the #MeToo (2017) and Black Lives Matter (2020) movements, and superstar sensitivity tests using cumulative-revenue thresholds. Four findings emerge. First, the relationship between demographics and price is not additive: a Female × Ethnic Minority interaction of +0.443 (p < 0.001) means the net price gap for women of color relative to white male artists is statistically indistinguishable from zero, even though both single-axis main effects are large and negative. Second, 27 superstar artists account for 61.3% of total revenue and are 96.2% male and 98.3% white; their exclusion attenuates or reverses the single-axis main effects while the intersectional interaction remains stable. Third, both cultural movements are associated with statistically significant narrowing of demographic price gaps in the immediate post-event period. Fourth, these gains were not equally distributed: women of color received no statistically measurable price improvement following either movement, a pattern consistent with the intersectional invisibility framework. The paper contributes a large-scale empirical demonstration that intersectional non-additivity holds in a major cultural market, establishes superstar sensitivity testing as a necessary protocol in markets with high revenue concentration, and offers practitioner-relevant guidance for collectors, auction specialists, gallery directors, and museum acquisition officers operating in markets where aggregate diversity statistics may obscure the experience of multiply-marginalized groups.