British American (from Celebrity Cuises) was started by the same people who used to supply Park West with onboard auctioneers.

The whole Park West approach has been questionable from the start. They hire auctioneers from a third party so they can claim a level of distance between what the actioneers say onboard and what is actually being sold. However, during the auction you will constantly hear the "Park West Gallery" name mentioned several times, and the company does send out the art, frame and even appraise it.

Any auction house that owns and appraises its own art is automatically not following typical art auction protocol.

The reason Celebrity and Royal Caribbean dropped Park West was too many lawsuits, many of them starting very soon now (end of 2011, early 2012). It amazed me when Celebrity went with British American - and they got ripped off. The company even left their auctioneers onboard and made Celebrity fly them home.

Meanwhile the British-American parent company had just received a round of funding by private equity. There is just WAY too much monkey business in the field of cruise ship art auctions for anyone to feel confident about the value of their purchase - unless you bought it purely for sentimental value.

I am the editor of CruiseMates.com and I have done several articles on this topic.