Alan Kessler

Alan Kessler has been a dealer, collector, and appraiser of American Indian art for over five decades. He is also an accomplished artist.

Alan’s passion for katsina dolls began in the early 1970s after he visited the studio of David Hare, sculptor and founder of the Surrealist magazine VVV. Since then he has collected and sold American Indian art both privately and in a gallery space, beginning on Bond Street in New York City and later relocating to Santa Fe, NM where he maintained a gallery on the famed Canyon Road for several decades. Alan is the author of Collecting Kachina Dolls 1880-1940 and is one of the founding members of the Antique Tribal Art Dealers Association (ATADA).

Additionally, Alan has a highly successful history of bringing numerous collections to auction. In fact, on December 4, 1997 Alan’s consigned katsina doll set the record for the highest priced katsina doll ever to be purchased at auction at $294,000 including buyer’s premium. Until then, the highest price for a katsina doll ever sold at auction was $20,000.

Alan has performed appraisals for five decades and has done so for national museums, private collections, corporations, and more.

Lastly, trained originally as an artist, Alan has produced a large body of celebrated work, primarily consisting of assemblages of polychrome wood realist objects. His work has been featured in solo exhibitions at OK Harris in New York City, the Syracuse Museum of Art, and the San Francisco Museum of Fine art, as well as in a group exhibition at the Denver Museum of Art. His work has been collected by Chase Manhattan Bank, Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Museum, The Portland Art Museum, and the National Gallery of Art.