About Heritage Auctions - Art: Illustration Art

Aviva Lehmann is a leading voice in the American art market, with over 25 years of experience shaping the field at the highest level. As Deputy Chairman of Fine Art at Heritage Auctions, she has played a central role in expanding the firm’s presence in American Art and Illustration, bringing major collections to market and achieving record-setting results.

A former specialist at Christie’s, Lehmann is known as a strategic thinker and market innovator, particularly through her work at Heritage, where she has helped redefine the market for narrative and American art.

She has led landmark sales, including the Boy Scouts of America’s Norman Rockwell Collection and the Barry and Maria King Collection of Early American Modernism, and has handled masterworks by Norman Rockwell, Georgia O’Keeffe, Robert Motherwell, Helen Frankenthaler, Andy Warhol, and J.C. Leyendecker. Most recently, she oversaw the $7.2 million sale of Rockwell’s So You Want to See the President!, acquired by the White House Historical Association.

A sought-after speaker and commentator, Lehmann lectures widely on the art market and has served as an adjunct professor at New York University, where she taught Appraisal and Valuation for 5 years. She has been profiled by Artnet as a “power broker” and is a frequent media voice, with appearances on Bloomberg and Fox News and features in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Forbes. She also serves as an art advisor for Apple TV+.

Sarahjane Blum joined Heritage in 2024, bringing with her decades of experience as an art dealer, cultural historian, curator, and writer. She is an internationally acknowledged expert in the fields of Illustration Art, and photography.

Before joining Heritage, Blum was the co-owner of Grapefruit Moon Gallery, an innovative and leading player in the fields of Illustration Art and photography. There, she carved out an international reputation via media and live appearances, curated gallery shows, and online engagement. Blum has been a featured presenter at museums, academic conferences, and national collector events. Her writing on film and culture has appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, among other places. She is the co-author of The Art of Pin Up (Taschen Books, 2014) and is featured in documentaries on Pin Up Art and Glamour photography. She holds an MA in History from Georgetown University, where she completed additional PhD coursework. 

Todd Hignite is Executive Vice President, Partner, and Global Head of Comic Art, Heritage Auctions. Todd has been integral to the company’s continued expansion in multiple art and collectible categories over the last fifteen years. As one of the world’s top Comic Art experts, he has overseen numerous record-setting results both at auction and privately, including Frank Frazetta’s world-record $13.5mm sale, managed many of the largest private and institutional consignments in the category, and played a key leadership role in the dramatic rise of the markets for Comics and Illustration Art, which has seen Heritage established as the dominant international auction house in those fields. 

Todd has also been instrumental to the increased cultural awareness of these art forms, notably in organizing the most substantial US retrospective devoted to Robert Crumb, which originated at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco and toured US museums, including the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, and the Frye Art Museum, Seattle; as author of the books In the Studio: Visits with Contemporary Cartoonists (Yale University Press) and The Art of Jaime Hernandez/The Secrets of Life and Death (Abrams); as founding editor of the much lauded Comic Art magazine; and as inaugural curator for the Dowd Illustration Research Archive. He also has extensive experience in both the museum and gallery worlds, including working for several years at Pace Gallery, New York, and he holds a Master’s degree in Art History from Washington University in St. Louis.