Molly Ott Ambler ’92 launched Molly Ott Ambler Art Advisory in New York City in 2023. She is also head of Impressionist & Modern Art for the Americas for Bonhams.

In her 25-year career, Molly has worked in fine art auctions and private sales, selling important by Pablo Picasso, Joan Miro, Claude Monet, Paul Gauguin, Helen Frankenthaler, Yayoi Kusama, Paul Cezanne, Piet Mondrian, Edvard Munch, Henry Moore, the Symbolists, and Surrealists — as well as the abstract expressionists and more contemporary American artists.

Molly loves to highlight works by female artists. She also enjoys the challenge of sourcing and selling unusual works. At Bonhams, she sold a 65-foot-long stage curtain created by Marc Chagall for the Metropolitan Opera’s 1967 production of Mozart’s “The Magic Flute.” After excellent coverage in the New York Times, the curtain sold to vigorous bidding for a final price of $990,300.

She was honored to represent two masterpieces painted in 1937: A lyrical jewel-like Pablo Picasso oil portrait of his muse, Marie Therese Walter, which sold during the height of the pandemic for $10.9 million, a record for Bonhams.

She also sold Rene Magritte’s stunning 1937 painting of a blue nude for $8.9 million from a group of works collected by the Swiss heiress and sculptor Amalia de Schultess. Across a sale of 200 objects, the de Schulthess collection sold under Molly’s direction for $15 million.

In 21 years working at Sotheby’s, Molly helped to sell works by every major modern artist. These included Edvard Munch’s The Scream, a delicate and very powerful pastel on board that sold for $119 million.

Growing up, Molly was particularly inspired by the wonderful collection at the Saint Louis Art Museum. Her mother, Mary Ott, was a docent and was also on the acquisition committee for a time, so Molly spent a lot of her childhood there, sketching in the galleries. She remembers being particularly drawn to Monet’s Water Lilies and a great Gauguin portrait as a kid.

Molly credits her Burroughs teachers for helping her learn and think in an interdisciplinary way. Joanna Collins ’47 inspired her because of the quality of the artwork she brought to the Bonsack Gallery for students to see. She also recalls a trip to London with Wayne Solomon, which included trips to the theater and museums, and the valuable lessons learned in James Alverson’s history class that helped her see that the creation of art is a vital part of any civilization’s history.

Molly’s parents commissioned a fountain from the great Bob Cassilly before he founded the City Museum, and that was her first experience of working directly with an artist and understanding how his vision could be combined with her parents’ idea and the use of some very beautiful Missouri limestone for the fountain they lived with.

Molly says she feels so lucky to have grown up in a city with such wonderful museums, adding that the fact that the Saint Louis Art Museum is still free to the public is an exceptional gift to the residents of St. Louis and the world.