Achieving $1.5 billion in a single evening, Visionary: The Paul G. Allen Collection has become the biggest sale in auction history, setting a record for a single-session, single-owner sale. It trumped, for instance Sotheby’s $676.1m Macklowe collection evening sale in November 2021, and the 9th November sale was only Part 1 of the Visionary event. Fueled by record-breaking masterworks spanning 500 years of artistic innovation, the Paul G. Allen collection, amassed by the co-founder of...
Christie’s Geneva auctioned The Fortune Pink as part of its November 8th Magnificent Jewels sale, which takes place twice each year. The Fortune Pink – the largest vivid pink pear-shaped diamond ever to be sold at auction – had an estimate of CHF25-35m, but reached CHF28,436,500 (£25,353,336). The pink diamond was undoubtedly the star of the show, though it was sold alongside impressive pieces from Van Cleef and Arpels, Harry Winston, Bulgari, Graff and Cartier....
Christie’s auction house has partnered up with renowned French antiques dealer of 18th and 19th century furniture and sculpture, Benjamin Steinitz, in a first for classic art: all 58 lots offered in the live auction Provenance Revealed: Galerie Steinitz on 21st September in London will be registered and secured on the Blockchain through Artory, a world leader in art tech and the blockchain-secured registration of physical artworks and collectibles. Provenance Revealed: Galerie Steinitz presents a remarkable opportunity for collectors to acquire a wide variety of objects...
It’s been reported that the art collection of technology giant Paul Allen, who died in 2018, will be sold by Christie’s auction house in what will be one of the biggest single-owner sales sales ever to come to auction. The sale is expected to raise over $1b. The Wall Street Journal reports that Paul Allen, who was listed on ARTnews’s Top 200 Collectors list for over two decades, specified that his art collection should be...
The first digital-only art auction by auction house Christie’s has sold a work by the artist Beeple for $69m (£50m). The digital artwork, The First 5000 Days, a montage of images made over the last 13 years and posted to Instagram, was sold as an NFT, a Non-Fungible Token – in other words the buyer gets no physical object, just the ownership of the art in the digital world. Beeple, real name Mike Winkelmann, has...
With some signs of the coronavirus lockdown easing, and doors of galleries, museums, exhibitions and theatres starting to re-open, we’re taking a look at the way the art world has responded to the coronavirus pandemic, and what the ‘new normal’ might look like. The doors of the Design Museum in London are finally open again, and celebrations are well underway in the new exhibition Electronic: From Kraftwerk to The Chemical Brothers. There are sights including...
Auction house Christie’s has announced plans to change its structure to “reflecting evolving market demand and the collecting habits of clients” Its Impressionist and Modern department will be merged with the Postwar and Contemporary department in a new hybrid sector called “20/21,” or “20th and 21st Century Art.” The decision is seen as a sign that auction houses are being forced to make changes to reflect the current state of the market both in terms...
Is sales tax legislation becoming the ‘bane of the art market’? Christie’s recent $16.7m settlement to avoid prosecution in the US for sales tax evasion demonstrates once again that it’s an increasingly common issue for both American and international art businesses. We turned to the experts from international art law specialists Withers for insight. It’s another taxing lesson in Sales Tax – Christie’s’ recent $16.7 million settlement to avoid prosecution for sales tax evasion has...
Reports from the art trade suggest that galleries and auction houses in the UK may be able to start re-opening from June 1st. The Art Newspaper reports that Freya Simms, chief executive of trade body LAPADA, has confirmed with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) that galleries and auction houses can be recognised as ‘non-essential retail’, included in Phase 2 of the easing of lockdown starting on June 1st. The government’s 60-page document...
A painting by the Art Deco painter Tamara de Lempicka, Portrait de Marjorie Ferry (1932), set a new auction record for the Polish-American artist’s work, selling for £16.2 million ($21.1 million) at Christie’s evening sale of Impressionist and modern art in London this week. This beat her previous record, set only three months ago, when La Tunique Rose (1927) sold for $13.3 million at Sotheby’s in New York. Portrait de Marjorie Ferry (seen top of...
