Ben Hartley, president of Louise Blouin Media, joins Joseph Stasko and Robin Roche to lead U.S. operations

BERLIN/NEW YORK, NY, March 3, 2014 – Auctionata, the first purely online auction house, today announced Ben Hartley, former president of Louis Blouin Media (LBM), will join the new U.S. management team as international managing director. In addition, Auctionata announced the appointments of Chief Operating Officer for North America, Joseph Stasko and Chief Auction Officer for North America, Robin Roche, to complete the U.S. management team.

“With Ben Hartley we have secured a talented and proven leader for our U.S. team, who understands the business strategies of the international art market like no other,” said Alexander Zacke, chief executive officer of Auctionata. “He completes our top notch U.S. management team and we could not be better prepared for the planned U.S. launch in New York.”

At LBM, Hartley played the leading role in building the company’s worldwide business into the largest culture and lifestyle publishing company, with magazines (Art + Auction; Modern Painters; Gallery Guide and Blouin Lifestyle), websites and book publishing company. Hartley has grown ARTINFO.com from a U.S.-based domestic online visual arts platform into a network of portals now operating in 20 countries, in ten languages and with over one million unique users per month. In addition to his role at LBM, Hartley previously served as the deputy director at the Museum of Arts and Design, led global corporate communications and sponsorship activities at the Guggenheim Museum and founded and managed a successful cultural consulting business.

Auctionata’s newly appointed Chief Operating Officer, Joseph Stasko, is a 25-year veteran of the international art world, who was most recently senior vice president and international managing director at Christie’s in New York. During his tenure there, Stasko led the expansion of its Fine Art Storage Services division into three countries and three continents. Stasko previously served as deputy director of the International Sculpture Center and executive director of the Organization of Independent Artists.

Before joining Auctionata as its North American Chief Auction Officer, Robin Roche headed artnet Auctions for three years. While there, artnet.com broke the world record for an online art sale with Andy Warhol’s “Flowers.” Roche previously managed the New York branch of Gerald Peters Gallery. She began her career at Christie’s, where she managed multiple specialist departments for ten years.

About Auctionata

Auctionata is the creator of the live digital auction and a leader in establishing the art tech industry. The company’s mission is to make the auction market for fine art and antiques transparent, accessible, and available to everyone by transferring the live auction experience to the Web. Headquartered in Berlin and with a U.S. office in New York City, Auctionata operates a network of more than 250 experts across 40 countries that values and authenticates objects. In addition to holding regular digital auctions, Auctionata operates an online store of fine art and antiques on its website. The company was founded in February 2012 and has garnered investment capital of more than €20 million from Holtzbrinck Ventures, eVenture, Bright Capital, Kite Ventures, TA Venture, Raffay Group and REN Invest S.à.r.l. For more information, visit www.auctionata.com/en.