W. Graham Arader III is perhaps the largest and most significant dealer of rare maps, prints and natural history watercolors within the United States. He established his business in 1974, bringing a high-charged, trading floor mentality to the print market. His business began with maps and Arader is credited with creating a market where formerly there was much less, and of bringing the world of cartography to the collector and not just the purview of academics and librarians. In The Island of Lost Maps, author Miles Harvey credits him with transforming what had been an "insular realm of aficionados," giving maps "unprecedented visibility, not only as investments... but as mass-media artifacts."[1] Arader has brought a similar acumen to the sale of natural history prints, books, and watercolors and is the largest dealer of John James Audubon’s highly-prized double-elephant folio prints from The Birds of America.
His success is founded upon remarkable enthusiasm for history and innovative sales techniques as well as an eye for quality. In 1981, he established the Arader Grading System to establish the worth and importance of rare maps, prints, and books, and as defined by conceptual importance, aesthetic quality, condition, and rarity. This system, combined with “original color” (as opposed to the modern hand-coloring of prints), has become Arader’s by-word for superiority.
Arader also invented a method of selling by syndication, a form of retailing with an added touch of gambling. For a fixed amount, clients purchase shares in the distribution of a set of prints or watercolors. By process of lottery, numbers are drawn to determine the order in which clients make a selection. Such a method was used by Arader in the fall of 1985, when he stunned the world of art auctions by buying the original watercolors for Pierre-Joseph Redouté’s masterpiece, Les Liliacées. Sotheby’s planned to auction off the flower watercolors one-by-one, but Arader created one of his sydicates and, in a remarkable coup, purchased the whole group with a single, unchallenged bid of five million dollars. Each of his investors acquired four watercolors for a share price of $63,250.[2]
Often regarded as a maverick, Arader has been described as “abrasive and solicitous, argumentative and engaging, unscholarly yet imposingly knowledgeable, charming when he absolutely needs to be and flatly rude when it suits him…”[3] His forceful and highly competitive personality has rankled many of Arader’s competitors.
Arader was most recently profiled in Forbes Magazine in the October 24, 2011 issue. He is also discussed by Sarah Vowell in episode 86 of This American Life.
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Arader is highly philanthropic and gives extensively to charitable causes. Over the past decade, he has made significant contributions to the following institutions and charities; University of Tennessee, University of Georgia, Los Angeles County Museum, Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, East Side House Settlement, University of Florida, Bruce Museum, Franklin College, Boston Library, Marymount College, Northeastern University, William Clements Library, Yale University, University of Pennsylvania, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Rigosin Institute, Fatherhood Education, United Way of Miami, The Parsons School, The Wilderness Society, The Library Company, University of South Carolina, Roundabout Theatre Company, Redwood Library, NY Aquarium, MMOA, Robin Hood Foundation, National Fish and Wildlife, American Antiquarian Society, Mann Music Center, Library of Congress, San Francisco Zoo, Lenox Hospital, New York School of Interior Design, Independence Seaport Museum, Fine Arts Museum San Francisco, Columbia University, Akiva Hebrew Day School, Harvard University, Wildlife Conservation Society, Children's Scholarship Fund, The Frick, Animal Medical Center, NYC Outward Bound, America Prairie, Santa Fe Opera, Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund, Nietsche Music Project, Telfair Art Museum, Collegiate School, Irish Society, New York Historical Society, City Squash, and the Dwight School.
Arader launched his "Educating the Next Generation" program that utilizes works of art to elevate the study of natural history as a subject of higher learning and to educate younger generations on the importance of understanding and preserving our natural world. Arader's aim to "help young people to appreciate the course of human history from the Age of Discovery to the Age of Empire" was most recently realized at Northeastern University.
Arader is a former trustee of the Yale Library Associates and South Street Seaport Museum, New York. Currently, Arader serves on the board of the Department of Psychiatry of Columbia University and the Board of Pediatric Urology of Columbia University. He is also on the Long Range Planning Advisory Council at Marymount College.
By his own account, Arader's career began while he was still a Yale University undergraduate. He played No. 1 singles on the varsity squash team for three years, and spent much of the rest of his time at Yale exploring the magnificent map holdings of the Sterling Memorial Library and the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. The curator of the Yale map collection, Alexander O. Vietor, became his mentor and Arader proudly boasts that he is “the only guy in history who used Yale as a trade school.”[4] In 1972, he received a B.A. degree in economics and the four-time All-American squash champion began a short-lived career as a tree surgeon. Two years later, his father, a Philadelphia businessman and map collector, lent his son one hundred and fifty thousand dollars and Arader began to travel the antique-show circuit. From small beginnings, selling maps out of the back of a station wagon, Arader has built a multi-million dollar business. He currently owns galleries in New York (2), Philadelphia, San Francisco, Houston, and King of Prussia, Pennsylvania.