What is the Deans' Choice program? Details explored as Alicia Keys and Swizz Beatz say the program is for their "children's children"

On September 9, 2026, Alicia Keys and Kasseem "Swizz Beatz" Dean put a long-running idea into the auction calendar. As reported by The Art Newspaper, Bonhams agreed to run Deans’ Choice ahead of its November sales in New York. A seller who joins must send money back to the living artist after the hammer falls. The house adds a matching sum.

According to Complex, the couple called the partnership a game-changing idea. They said Bonhams saw why it mattered as soon as the plan was on the table.

The split is specific. According to The Art Newspaper, a seller who takes part has to give the artist at least 1 percent of the hammer price. If 1 percent comes to less than $500, the payment is $500 instead. Bonhams then contributes the same percentage.

As Forbes reported, the house draws its share from the buyer's premium. The first auctions using the program are Bonhams' November sales of 20th- and 21st-century art in New York.

For the moment, only U.S. auctions are covered. Johnson told The Art Newspaper that no works had been named yet, but that clients had responded well. He also said Bonhams expects the program to cost the house, and treats that cost as proof it is doing what it set out to do.

As reported by The Art Newspaper, Alicia Keys and Swizz Beatz said their music careers made the gap obvious to them. Writers can still be paid when a track is played or licensed long after it comes out.

According to Complex, they said income doesn't stop with them and can go to their children. TIME reported a different result for painters and photographers in the United States: a later auction sale usually sends nothing back to the person who made the work.

As The Art Newspaper reported, that second payment, known in other markets as droit de suite, is already in place for visual artists in more than 90 countries. In the United States, similar bills have not passed. Dean had been floating an auction version of the idea since 2019.

On October 5, 2026, Alicia Keys and Swizz Beatz were recognized for Deans' Choice at the TIME100 Impact Dinner at SECOND in New York, held as TIME issued its first Art list. As reported by People, Swizz Beatz described the night as a milestone on a project that had taken almost 10 years.

"We just hit a big milestone on the project that we worked on for almost 10 years. It's called the Deans' Choice. The Deans' Choice is basically making collectors responsible to collect, protect and respect the artists because that's our job."

He said support had arrived, but it wasn't enough.

"This room has so much work to do, but the good part is we’re doing the work for our children's children's children. We’re not here for us. We had a good time. We did all the parties. Now we have to lay the path out for the future to be better than us."

Alicia Keys and Kasseem Dean have two sons together, Egypt and Genesis, and Dean also has three older children from earlier relationships: Prince, Kasseem, and Nicole.

Alicia Keys and the collection that led to the program

Alicia Keys spoke at the same reception. As reported by People, she described the room as a place where people were trying to build a life and a body of work that could last.

"The fact that we are all authors and artists of forever is such a powerful thought. We get to architect the life that we want to imagine. We get to architect the art that we live and breathe. As an artist, I think one of the most incredible things, and that's what I feel the most in this room, is a sense of real true connection, a sense of desire to find your best self and to represent a diverse understanding of life."

The auction plan sits atop a private collection Alicia Keys and Dean built without a formal brief. In a September 17 TIME profile tied to the Art list, Swizz Beatz said they bought because they liked the work and liked doing it together.

Alicia Keys told TIME the Dean Collection should leave a creative person fully in charge of their own work, and described it as by the artist, for the artist, with the people. Dean told the same outlet they were not in a position to scrap market rules, only to adjust the parts they rejected, and that a small number of sellers joining would already count as a win.

According to TIME, more than 130 works drawn from holdings that run past a thousand are touring after an opening at the Brooklyn Museum in 2024. Further dates run to 2031. The San Diego stop at the Museum of Contemporary Art drew more than 25,000 people.

Forbes reported a fifth presentation at the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields, open from September 19, 2026, through February 28, 2027, with 134 objects by Black American, African, and African diasporic artists. Among them are a chained tire by Arthur Jafa, an Amy Sherald diptych, street photographs by Jamel Shabazz, and 2024 Kehinde Wiley portraits of Keys and Dean.

TIME also described how buying turned into regular contact with the artists. Alicia Keys and Kasseem Dean visited studios and sometimes brought their five children. They took calls late at night and gave advice when they could. Dean said the trust came from treating artists as people, not as transactions.

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Alicia Keys said those relationships felt like friendships, and that she and Dean approached other artists differently because they are artists themselves.

The Deans' Choice program grows out of that same divide: music can keep paying its makers, while a resold painting usually does not.

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