About
Above the Sofa is the first art advisory firm conceived solely for the Interior Design community. Intended to function as your outsourced in-house art advisor, we apply art world savvy and expertise to the acquisition process, while bearing in mind your aesthetic guiding principles and the overall look and feel of each client project. Our innate ability to discern and distill your taste to source more substantial works of art will increase the profitability of the projects as a whole while enhancing the visibility required for publication. We source works of art for both lasting value and maximum visual impact.
While attractive works of art are often sourced for their decorative effect, when art world acumen is not applied, they rarely appreciate. With the art market growing tremendously year over year, why not maximize your client’s dollars spent on those artists most likely to retain or increase in value? Not only will this elevate each project, it will only enhance the likelihood of return clients. While Above the Sofa does not have a crystal ball, we do offer over twenty years of experience in sourcing works of art by artists poised for longevity and success. By tapping this expertise and applying Above the Sofa’s proprietary inquiry process, you can give your client every confidence in the choices you are making.
Above the Sofa is steeped in both the traditional and contemporary art world with longstanding relationships with galleries and auction houses, enforced by regular attendance at current art fairs, gallery exhibitions and museum shows. We leverage these relationships to provide access to a tremendous library of works. Using a proprietary digital filing system to save available works of art, which enables us to call up works of art by color, style and scale, we can provide recommendations in an instant. By engaging us at the beginning of your design process, we will select works of art and deliver them so that they will be ready to hang on install day.
Our Founder
Above the Sofa was founded by Liz Beaman. Art is in Liz’s DNA. Her paternal grandfather was an abstract artist and the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Art at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Her maternal grandparents began collecting then avant-garde Contemporary Art in the 1970s and continued to do so until their passing. Inspired by the creativity of her grandfather’s work and the beautiful way in which her grandparents chose to live with their collection, Liz began to pursue a career in the arts beginning in high school. Twenty- five years later Liz still cites their influence as the guiding principle behind her work.
Liz is a veteran of the art world and is a foremost expert in American Art. Liz honed her expertise during two decades as a Specialist at Sotheby’s and Christie’s, where she was a Senior Vice President and Head of the American Art department.
While art has always been both a passion and a vocation, in her spare time, Liz pores over Elle Decor, Architectural Digest, World of Interiors, Veranda and others, and, of course, Instagram, perusing the work of Interior Designers. Equally as enthralled by fabric samples as the latest gallery show in Chelsea, Liz founded Above the Sofa to bridge what she has long perceived as a disconnect between these two aesthetically minded art forms- art advisory and interior design. Collecting can and should be both an artistic endeavor and an asset investment, even at modest price points. Above the Sofa enables Liz to live vicariously through exciting design projects while still remaining rooted in her true passion, fine art.
In addition to founding Above the Sofa, Liz runs an art advisory firm, Beaman Delman Fine Arts, focused on secondary market sales and all aspects of art advisory and collection management. Liz splits her time between New York and Los Angeles and has held volunteer leadership roles in both cities. She has been on the board of the Archives of American Art, a member of the Director’s Council at the Guggenheim, the Director’s Circle of the Hammer Museum and three affinity groups at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art including the Collector’s Committee. Liz is a graduate of Vanderbilt University and a native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
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