Musicians collect royalties every time a song is played. Visual artists in the United States generally have no legal right to a share when a painting they sold for a modest sum resurfaces at auction for many times the price. Alicia Keys and Kasseem “Swizz Beatz” Dean, collectors known for their holdings of contemporary Black art, want to change that, and last week they enlisted an auction house to help.
How Deans’ Choice works
On September 9, Bonhams announced a voluntary artist resale royalty program created with the couple, called Deans’ Choice. Consignors selling work by living artists can opt in to contribute a minimum of 1% of the hammer price or $500, whichever is greater, to the artist, and Bonhams will match whatever the consignor contributes, The Art Newspaper reported. The program launches with the house’s November 2026 sales in New York and is currently limited to U.S. auctions, according to Complex.
Bonhams has not projected what the match will cost it, and its chief executive, Seth Johnson, said that was intentional. “We want this to cost us because that is a visible measure of success,” he told The Art Newspaper. “Collectors are increasingly attentive to collecting in a way that reflects their values, and this program gives them a straightforward way to do that.”
Johnson framed the move as a bet on the market’s direction. “We believe this is where the market is heading, and we intend to help take it there,” he said, as quoted by Complex. Speaking to Black Enterprise, he added: “Artists have told us directly that this is the direction they’ve been asking the market to take for a long time.”
The gap it addresses
Resale royalties (droit de suite) exist for visual artists in more than 90 countries, but efforts to establish such rights in the United States have largely stalled, according to The Art Newspaper. The debate has a famous origin story: in 1973, Robert Rauschenberg confronted the collector Robert C. Scull after Scull sold a Rauschenberg painting for $85,000 that he had bought for $900.
The couple has explicitly drawn the comparison to music, where royalties are standard. Deans’ Choice does not change the law; it relies on the goodwill of sellers. But a matched contribution from a major auction house gives that goodwill a structure, and a price.
The collectors behind it
Keys and Dean founded The Dean Collection, which has grown from roughly 400 pieces to thousands with an emphasis on contemporary Black artists. Their exhibition Giants: Art from the Dean Collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys filled the Brooklyn Museum’s Great Hall with nearly 100 works in 2024, including pieces by Kehinde Wiley, Amy Sherald, Titus Kaphar and Toyin Ojih Odutola, Surface reported.
The exhibition is still traveling. Its fifth stop opens September 19 at Newfields in Indianapolis, running through February 28, 2027, with works by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Gordon Parks and others, according to Black Enterprise.
What to watch
The real test comes in November, when consignors decide whether to opt in. Voluntary schemes can stall without a visible first mover. If a significant seller commits early, Deans’ Choice may do what years of legislative effort have not: make paying artists a normal part of the resale conversation.
See all sources
- Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys launch resale royalty initiative with Bonhams, The Art Newspaper, 2026-09-09
- Alicia Keys, Swizz Beatz Link With Bonhams to Launch Royalty Award Program for Artists, Complex, 2026-09-09
- Swizz Beatz And Alicia Keys Partner With Bonhams To Help Artists Get Paid When Their Work Gets Resold, Black Enterprise, 2026-09-11
- The Dean Collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys’ Art Comes to Brooklyn, Surface, 2024-02-10
Lead image: illustrative photo by Fredrik Posse on Unsplash.
