Auctions

Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s personal library for sale at Bonhams

The sale traces her intellectual development from a law student and avid reader to one of the most recognizable justices on the Supreme Court.

Long walk to nowhere: auction of items owned by Nelson Mandela cancelled due to brewing dispute in South Africa

Proceeds from the sale were meant to fund a memorial garden and museum around the freedom fighter’s burial site

Not a single bid for the $500m Casino Ludovisi with its Caravaggio and Guercino

This Roman villa with its great masterpieces will be re-offered on 7 April at a 20% lower valuation

Auctionsanalysis

What's a Caravaggio worth if it’s on a ceiling and you may not remove it for sale? We'll soon find out

The Ludovisi Casino in Rome, with its masterpiece frescoes, is up for auction by the courts, estimate nearly half a billion euro

NFTnews

Crypto group shamed for spending $3m on ‘Dune’ book, mistakenly believing it had acquired copyright to produce NFTs

The group Spice DAO planned to sell NFTs based on the contents of the book, which details Alejandro Jodorowsky’s ambitious but failed adaptation of Frank Herbert’s sci-fi novel

'Cancelled' Madonna and Child found beneath Botticelli's $40m Man of Sorrows

Infrared images of the painting, which is due to be sold at Sotheby's in New York later this month, show that an earlier composition lies underneath

Rediscovered Bernhard Strigel painting found in a Toulouse home expected to sell for up to €800,000

The panel is thought to be the pair of Strigel's Thurifer Angel, which was bought by the Louvre Abu Dhabi in Paris in 2008

One of the world's biggest collections of German Expressionism heads to auction

Hermann Gerlinger had been loaning his 1,000 works to museums, but will now sell them through Munich-based auction house Ketterer Kunst

Art marketanalysis

Get ready for the new world order: art market experts make their predictions for 2022

US dominance, industry collaborations and increased concern about climate change are all on art market experts’ minds—and, of course, NFTs

Auctions in China accounted for 36% of global market in 2020, new report finds

The latest China Art & Wealth White Paper found that domestic annual sales dropped by 20% to $6.2bn last year, due to Covid-19 controls, but recovered quickly later in the year

Omicron won't thwart my Old Master mission

My trip to Munich's Alte Pinakothek was worth the multiple levels of Covid-related admin

Rare watercolour by Victorian artist born without arms or legs could sell for up to £5,000

Sarah Biffin was an accomplished miniaturist who was so famous in her lifetime Charles Dickens referred to her in three novels

'There are too many auctions and not enough collectors': Christie's and Sotheby's thin Old Master sales fetch a combined £29.3m in London

The star of the sales was a pair of half-length portraits by Van Dyck that sold for £6.2m at Sotheby's, the second-highest price for the artist at auction

Art advisors Gurr Johns buys (another) auction house, 'catering to an under-loved sector of the market for works of art under $100,000'

The firm is buying the London-based books and works on paper specialist Forum Auctions—it previously bought Dreweatts and Bloomsbury for £1.25m in 2017

Magdalena Abakanowicz's haunting installation 'Bambini' expected to sell for up to $3.6m at auction in Poland

The work, consisting of 83 child-size figures in concrete and wood, was made in the late 1990s and has been exhibited on the roof of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art and in the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid

Monet water lilies painting sells for $24.1m in Beijing—new record for a Western work of art sold in China

The painting was consigned to China Guardian’s first Impressionist and Modern art sale by Lévy Gorvy gallery

Art marketanalysis

Can an art market wild about young 'red-chip' artists and NFTs still value blue-chip, white male masters? Answer: Yes, for now

New York's "gigafortnight" sales of the Cox and Macklowe collections showed there is still a market for classics—even while a Beeple sells for $29m to a tweeting tech entrepreneur

Whitney Duan was one of China's richest women, until she vanished in 2017. Now the Zeng Fanzhi painting she once owned is being auctioned in Beijing

The real-estate tycoon, a key patron of Zeng, has not been seen since she was "disappeared"—the painting, Prayer, is now described by Poly auctions as "entrusted by an important institution"

New records set for Arthur Dove and Paul Cadmus in latest American art sales

The specialist New York auctions at Christie's and Sotheby's made $28.9m and $14.2m respectively

Mucho mucho amor: Celebrity astrologer Walter Mercardo’s estate to be sold at Bonhams

Highlights include a platinum diamond ring and his signature white silk cape

Sotheby's to offer The Hamilton Aphrodite, an ancient Roman marble last sold 70 years ago now expected to fetch up to £3m

The larger than life-size statue was brought back from Rome by the Duke of Hamilton in the 18th century and is named after his Scottish palace

Podcastspodcast

Big money, new collectors: the low-down on the New York auctions

Plus, Fabergé in London and a rediscovered Dürer

Hosted by Ben Luke, Aimee Dawson and Martin Bailey. with guest speaker Anna Brady. Produced by Julia Michalska and David Clack. With Henrietta Bentall
Sponsored byChristie's

Sotheby's triple-header New York auction night notches up $234.2m with artist records for Lisa Brice, Maria Berrio and seven others

The auction house also accepted cryptocurrency on two works by Banksy and sold a rare copy of the US Constitution for $41m

Strong prices for female painters and young artists—but Francis Bacon's Pope sells to the guarantor—at Phillips's $137.9m auction in New York

The 20th century and contemporary art evening sale saw stiff competition for works by Shara Hughes, Joan Mitchell, Amy Sherald and Cecily Brown

Frida Kahlo breaks record for a Latin American artist in Sotheby's $238m Modern art sale

While the auction's star lots included the $34.9m Kahlo and four Monets, the most aggressive bidding was on works by Alexander Calder and Pierre Soulages

Macklowe collection auction brings $676.1m, the highest sale total in Sotheby’s history

Bidders from Asia snapped up the sale’s two biggest lots, trophy works by Giacometti and Rothko

Four Van Goghs go for $161m in one evening in New York—double their Christie’s estimates

For the artist who failed to sell during his lifetime, there is now a surge in the market for Vincent’s late paintings

Caillebotte masterpiece goes to Getty and four auction records smashed at Christie’s New York sale of Edwin Cox’s Impressionist trove

Last night's single-owner sale of the late Texan oilman's vaunted collection brought in a massive $332m