About

Sara Shadab-Moktari has been appraising art for well over 15 years and is the Director of Acquisitions for Galerie Michael in Beverly Hills. Sara travels to Europe a few times a year to buy from private clients and dealers for the gallery collection.

Her area of specialty is in Old Master etchings by Rembrandt and Durer,  18th and 19th Century European paintings, pastels, and drawings by Corot, Cezanne, Breton, Renoir, Monet, Degas, Pissarro, Manet, Lautrec, Cheret, Mucha and Modern Master works by Chagall, Picasso, Matisse, Miro, Dali and many others.

She is an affiliate of the Appraiser’s Association of America through which she holds eight certificates in Fine Art Appraisal Studies from New York University.  The Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice is one of her many certificates renewed every two years and is highly recognized by the Internal Revenue Service for art appraisal.  

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Sara graduated from UCLA in 1986 with a B.A. in French and Italian. Soon after, she started working at Galerie Michael, assisting the sales staff as a part-time intern. After a few months, she was offered a full-time job assisting the gallery’s Chief Curator, Baron Ivo von Kirschen, who was also an Appraiser with the Chambre Syndicale de l’Estampes, Paris and a member of the Appraiser’s Association of America.  Mr. Kirschen was highly influential in teaching Sara about evaluating art: from the type of paper an used in Old Master prints to studying the effects of sunlight and smoke on canvas' in need of restoration to the process of printmaking. 

After two years under his tutelage, she was promoted to the position of assistant registrar. This entailed being responsible for the inventory of all in-coming art purchases, cataloguing the art, and doing the necessary research of inclusion for certificates of authenticity; she was also in charge of framing and restoring all the art as necessary. She spent well over 10 years in that capacity until gradually taking over all the art acquisitions for the gallery.