PC Profile: Alexandra Olsman OPC ’08

Alexandra Olsman OPC ’08 sometimes likes to unwind by watching the PBS series, "Antiques Roadshow." The show’s premise is that ordinary people come in with family heirlooms or with items picked up at a flea market which they hope might be worth something, demonstrating that one person’s goodbye may be another person’s great discovery.

Ramp up the stakes by a few thousand percent and Antiques Roadshow is not a bad comp for what Olsman does for a living. She is a vice president and specialist in ancient sculpture and works of art for the auction house Sotheby’s. If someone in North America has an ancient Egyptian scarab, a Greek vase or a Roman bust, they are likely to consult Olsman to have it appraised, evaluated and perhaps sold. During eight years at Sotheby’s, Olsman has helped value and sell some truly priceless objects. In December 2021, it was the Hamilton Aphrodite, a first century C.E. Roman sculpture named for the Scottish Duke of Hamilton who once owned it. It went for £18.6 million—nearly $25 million—making it the most expensive classical marble statue ever sold at auction. In January, Olsman assisted with the sale of an Egyptian mummy portrait for $889,000. In addition to appraising it, she spent the auction glued to the phone, fielding bids from remote bidders. During the weeks leading up to the sale, Olsman helped promote interest on social media but could barely contain her own enthusiasm. “This portrait is nearly 2,000 years old,” she marveled, “so why do I feel like I know who he is?” 

Olsman’s twin loves of history and art trace back to Penn Charter. The ancient world had always fascinated her. In Lower School, she checked out the same book on Greek mythology so often that librarians gently suggested that she let someone else read it. When she got to Middle School, the Latin language rotation with former teacher Jim Fiorile fit her interests perfectly. “My world was blown,” Olsman said. “I thought it was the coolest thing ever, that you could make history come alive with language.” She continued taking Latin through Middle and Upper School and studied classical Greek “just for fun” as an independent study. She even revived the Latin Club. Longtime PC Latin teacher Marianne Master still remembers Olsman as one of her best students. “It was a privilege to see her discover ancient poetry in its original form, to understand it in a sophisticated and nuanced way, and to grapple with why we study these ancient languages and cultures and what they have to teach us,” she said.

Olsman’s interest in art was sharpened by the AP Art History course she took senior year. “I think art is the absolute best way to understand what mattered most in a culture’s history,” she said. “This was the final piece in the puzzle for me and solidified that I wanted to study art history and classics in college, which set me on my career path.” Olsman attended the University of Pennsylvania, drawn in part by the renowned collection of ancient artifacts in the Penn Museum, and graduated magna cum laude in 2012.

As much as she loved studying classics and art, Olsman chose not to go into academia. Instead, she went into the auction world, starting at Christie’s as a bid coordinator and eventually becoming an associate specialist in antiquities. She jumped to Sotheby’s in 2018 and assumed her current rule in April 2025. Today, Olsman handles Greek, Roman, Egyptian or Near Eastern objects dating from as far back as neolithic times to about 1000 C.E. Besides ensuring that items are authentic, she also checks their provenance, being careful to comply with the rigorous international laws governing when and how antiquities can be taken from overseas. If a piece is going to be sold at auction, Olsman sees that it is photographed, cataloged and dated correctly. She then becomes a salesperson trying, as she says, “to make sure that these objects find great new homes with people.” Olsman also spends a lot of her time appraising objects for insurance and estate tax valuations.

The market for ancient art, like any other type of art, is cyclical. Currently, Olsman said, “We’re seeing a lot of new buyers. We’re in a really good place.” Still, people don’t usually buy antiquities as a speculation. They tend to be in it for the longer term. Why? The answer, Olsman believes, is that collectors are often people like herself. “For a lot of my clients, when they were young and they went to the Met, they fell in love with a mummy because it’s so compelling,” she said. “And then you’re able to be the custodian of a little piece of that. I think that’s really compelling to people.”