Auction houses

Art marketinterview

Need a 100-year-old Inuit parka made from seal guts? Dealer Peter Petrou to sell collection at Sotheby's

The London-based dealer of four decades is downsizing and having a 200-lot sale of contemporary art, Modern furniture, ethnographic art and antiquities

Art marketanalysis

Connoisseurship: is it time for a comeback?

When prices and cultural value are so easily confused, there is a case for the return of critical evaluation—in updated form

Follow the money: Christie's bets on Hong Kong with vast new headquarters as clients in Asia spend over $1bn so far this year

Auction house will move into Zaha Hadid-designed luxury tower The Henderson in 2024, where it will hold year-round sales and exhibitions

Can auctions save the earth? Christie's to fundraise for environmental charity by selling works by Cecily Brown and Rashid Johnson

The auction house has teamed with up Gallery Climate Coalition to raise between $5m-$10m for ClientEarth

Christie’s results for first half of 2021 show marked shift towards Asia, online and private sales—and female auctioneers

Auction sales, according to the analysts ArtTactic, are up 230% to a total of $5.9bn so far this year at the three major auction houses, Christie's, Sotheby's and Phillips

Legal battle over €15m Leonardo discovery: owner, Tajan auction house and French government fight it out

An export ban was placed on the drawing in 2017 but the French culture ministry has not purchased the drawing as planned

Sotheby's doubles down on private sales with Monte-Carlo gallery

Seasonal two-storey space is newest addition to Monaco's growing commercial art scene

'Jobs for the boys… why I'm starting to feel old amid the new art world order'

The thrusting land of NFTs and tech nomads favours the young—and has yet to shake off the old ties of nepotism

Access denied: British auction house executives refused US visas to travel for marquee New York sales week

But the show goes on at Sotheby’s and Christie’s with a mixture of in-person and remote bidding, while British dealers are getting creative in the Big Apple

Christie's to offer paid internships to students with disabilities

Auction house has partnered with disability charity Leonard Cheshire's Change 100 programme to give work placements in-house and fund others at Tate and National Galleries of Scotland

Christie’s supports charity delivering art history lessons for students at UK state schools

Art History Link-Up chief says subject is a rare offer at state schools because of cuts and teacher shortages

Phillips names Stephen Brooks, a former Christie's financial officer, as new chief executive

The current chief, Edward Dolman, will shift in September to a new role as executive chairman of Phillips’ holding company

Sotheby’s launches first auction dedicated to women artists—but why do we still need a segregated sale in 2021?

Online sale will span the 17th to the 21st centuries featuring artists including Dorothea Tanning, Hannah Höch and Barbara Hepworth

Sotheby's to sell Robert Colescott's take on George Washington crossing the Delaware River

The painting's low estimate of $9m is ten times the artist's record at auction

NFTnews

Sotheby’s gets in on NFT fever with a collaboration with digital artist Pak

Auction house's head of sale Max Moore has already personally bought a work by the artist

Art Basel/UBS report: global art market shrinks by almost a quarter to $50.1bn during Covid-19 crisis

Online sales, a growing pool of billionaires and reduced overheads all helped sustain the trade when physical art fairs and auctions all but disappeared

Newly attributed Bernini drawing up for auction in France

Actéon auctioneers expect the 17th-century study of a male nude, authenticated by Ann Sutherland Harris and Louis de Bayser, to sell for €30,000 to €50,000

Christie’s to accept cryptocurrency for first time

The buyer of Beeple's NFT work will be able to pay with ETH later this month

Art marketanalysis

Neoliberalism is distorting how we see art—is there no alternative?

While today’s art world has been shaped by the prism of price, our current economic model may not be inevitable

Can Paris snatch the art market crown from London?

The French capital seems resurgent, but other elements may intervene

Art marketanalysis

Lockdown home decorators boost New York's Americana week auctions

Chippendale-style furniture, elephant tureens and a broadside edition of the Declaration of Independence were in demand at the sales series last week

Art marketanalysis

Blue-chip artists move over, here come the red chips

Art as a blue-chip investment has had its day, as buyers chase the latest "red-chip" names

Brexitnews

As a Brexit deal is agreed, confused and resigned UK art world ponders life after leaving the European Union

Art dealers, shippers and auctioneers are unsure about how leaving the single market will impact their business—but there is a silver lining

Art marketinterview

A crisis hits the art market once a decade. What is different this time? Christie's president Dirk Boll assesses the impact of the pandemic

As his new book is published, the auction house chief compares coronavirus fallout to previous economic disasters

European auction houses weather crisis as customers spend millions on art online

Expecting the worst, French, German and Austrian auction houses have been surprised by how well sales have held up through the pandemic

Tech-savvy Sotheby's $5bn global sales beat Christie's $4.4bn in 2020

The two rivals have made record online and private sales as pandemic overturns traditional live auction format

Kabir Jhala. with additional reporting by Anna Brady
Diaryblog

Abso-lot-ely fabulous: Joanna Lumley tries out her auctioneering skills at Christie’s

Star sold seven illustrations in aid of Roald Dahl’s Marvellous Children’s Charity

Christie's sale in collaboration with cancelled La Biennale Paris fair flops

Online auction of art and antiques that would have been exhibited at Parisian fair achieves €1.5m with 21 of 91 lots sold

Gerhard Richter painting becomes most expensive western work ever sold at auction in Asia

The $29.2m painting sold at Sotheby's last night in a live-streamed contemporary art sale that took place in Hong Kong as Christie's held its marquee sale in New York

Art marketanalysis

Livestreamed auctions make gameshows of art, but where is the glamour?

Christie's and Sotheby's have rapidly adapted to 'bricks and clicks' sales, but they will need to do more to attract top-notch consignments and the experience-hungry generation