American Furniture & Decorative Arts

John Hays, who joined Christie’s in 1983, is considered the premier auctioneer of Americana sales and has presided over such landmark events as the auction of The Collection Mr. & Mrs. Eddy Nicholson (1995) and the unprecedented sale of the Nicholas Brown Chippendale desk-and-bookcase, a $12.1 million result which remains the world auction record for American Furniture (1989). In January 2006, Mr. Hays directed the highest selling single-owner collection of Americana - The Property from the Collection of Mrs. J. Insley Blair featuring the seminal portrait by Charles Willson Peale, George Washington at Princeton, which sold for $21.2 million, setting a work auction record for an American portrait. Another highlight included a Taunton, Massachusetts William and Mary diminutive paint decorated pine chest-of-drawers by Robert Crossman, which realized $2.9 million. Mr. Hays brings tremendous expertise and insight to the field of Americana. He is a graduate of Phillips Exeter Academy and holds a BA in Art History from Kenyon College.

Cara Zimmerman is a Vice President, Head of Americana and Outsider Art. Since joining the company in 2014, Cara has developed and expanded Christie’s Outsider Art sales, creating stand-alone auctions for the category and achieving world auction records for important Outsider artists including William Edmondson, William Hawkins, Bill Traylor, and Carlo Zinelli, among many others. She has also been instrumental in highly successful Folk Art sales, which have achieved top prices for works by artists including Edward Hicks, Ammi Phillips, Wilhelm Schimmel, and Samuel Addison and Ruth Whittier Shute.

Before joining Christie’s, Cara worked for the Philadelphia Museum of Art and served as Executive Director for the Foundation for Self-Taught Artists in Philadelphia. She has edited and written for catalogues published by the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Ackland Art Museum at UNC Chapel Hill, San Jose State University, and the University of Delaware University Museums. Cara received her AB from Harvard University and her MA from the University of Delaware. She is a PhD Candidate at the University of Delaware.

Since joining Christie’s in 2018, Julia Jones has been instrumental in the successful sale of works of important American furniture and paintings, Outsider art and Decorative arts. Julia has worked on landmark sales such as the Collection of Anne and Gordon Getty, La Rêverie: The Collection of Sydell Miller and the Collection of Henry Ford II. She oversaw the white glove sale of High Style in Highland Park: The Collection of Mr. & Mrs. Edwin L. Cox. Julia graduated with B.A.’s in Art History and Anthropology from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., and went on to receive her Master’s degree in History of Art at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London.

Martha Willoughby is a specialist consultant in the American furniture and folk art department at Christie’s. A graduate of Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, Martha earned her M.A. from the Winterthur Program in Early American Culture at the University of Delaware. She has worked at several museums, including the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, the National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C. and the Museum of the City of New York. She joined Christie’s in 1996 and since has worked there as specialist, department head and most recently, consultant. At Christie’s, Martha focuses on the research and catalogue essays for important works, such as the Fisher-Fox tea table that remains the record for Philadelphia furniture, Charles Willson Peale’s full-length portrait of George Washington, a record for any historical American portrait and in January 2022, Ammi Phillips’ Lady in Green with Pink Ribbons, a record for American folk art.