Archives for November 2007

This chart from Sotheby's website says it all: It's a graphic illustration of the auction house's stock in freefall. It closed yesterday at 35.84, rebounding from a low of 30.80, but down 14.23 (28.42%) from the previous day's close. Volume, shown in the bar graph at the bottom, was off the charts: 24.11 million shares traded yesterday, compared to the previous day's 2.78 … [Read more...] about Tale of the Tape: Sotheby’s Stock at Yesterday’s Close

The Lynchburg, VA, News & Advance has the story. Christa Desrets reports: A Lynchburg Circuit Court judge Tuesday evening granted a temporary injunction that would delay the sale of four paintings from the Maier Museum of Art until other ongoing litigation against Randolph College is settled. The injunction would be set once the opponents to the sale post a $10 million bond, … [Read more...] about News Flash: Court Grants Temporary Injunction Against Maier Museum Sales

Not all is bleak in the world of art auctions. This just in from MASS MoCA's director of marketing & PR, Katherine Myers: Our benefit results were heartening, to say the least. The Sol LeWitt wall drawing donated by Paula Cooper slammed through it's pre-auction estimate of $150,000, bringing $260,000. A small Crewdson production print attracted lively competition and sold for … [Read more...] about At Least One Auction Exceeded Expectations!

It must be my week to attract attention from the British: The Independent of London today published an article, The Woman Who Put the Art in Wal-Mart, that begins with an allusion to my Wall Street Journal article on Alice Walton's collecting practices, and ends with a mention of her desire to acquire works from the Maier Museum's collection. Like Walton's local defenders, the … [Read more...] about London’s “Independent” Has Strange Way of Defending Walton

As of 11:55 a.m., the stock price for publicly traded Sotheby's was at 34.25, down 15.82 points (32%) from yesterday's 50.07 close. You can follow the carnage on Sotheby's website here. Linda Sandler and Philip Boroff of Bloomberg report on the downgrading of Sotheby's stock by analysts. … [Read more...] about Sotheby’s Publicly Traded Stock Crashes

The Bespoke BBC: Would you get in the back seat of a car with these chaps? I look a little tired on camera, but so did auctioneer Tobias Meyer, on a rocky night. My interviewer for the piece on art prices is the appropriately named Matthew Price, above right. His trusty cameraman sidekick, left, is Keith Tayman. They abducted me in a black SUV for the presale interview, then … [Read more...] about Now on Your Computer: CultureGrrl on BBC-TV

Let's be merciful and avert our eyes from the dispiriting Impressionist/modern sale last night at Sotheby's, which ended with stony silence from the audience, rather than the smattering of relieved applause that had accompanied Christie's relatively solid sale the night before. Some 20 of the 76 works offered failed to sell last night, and they included many of the highest … [Read more...] about Sotheby’s Goes South: Lackluster Sale Raises Fears of the “C” Word

Rather than my filling you in on further details about last night's Impressionist/modern auction at Christie's (which I've already discussed here and here), I'm going to let the NY Times and Bloomberg do it for me. And you can track the thoughts of the Wall Street Journal's Kelly Crow and Lauren A.E. Schuker in the newspaper's new auction blog, On the Block. But the most … [Read more...] about Auction Links, a New WSJ Auction Blog, and New Auction Machinations Exposed

Click below to hear my four auction minutes, "Fall Auction Season Starts Today" (actually, yesterday) from today's Morning Edition on New York Public Radio (WNYC): Christopher Burge gets a lot more done in four minutes than I do. If you're tuning in to CultureGrrl today from WNYC's website link, please check out my report on last night's first episode of "As the Market Turns," … [Read more...] about My WNYC Art-Market Murmurings; BBC-TV Next?

Where'd everyone go? (Christie's, about two-thirds though the Impressionist/modern marathon) I think I pretty much got it right in my art-market musings for WNYC's Morning Edition, airing today. But you can listen later and judge for yourself. Here's a quick recap of tonight's somewhat humdrum but solid sale at Christie's: The hammer-price total was $349.99 million ($394.98 … [Read more...] about Christie’s Respectable but Unspectacular Impressionist/Modern Sale

Listen to the sound of me falling on my face, as I hazard some some opinions about the state of the art market, taped in the WNYC studio today (face-to-face with the Soterios the Voice!), for airing on Morning Edition tomorrow---by which time the results of tonight's Impressionist/modern sale at Christie's will probably have made a complete fool of me. If you want to laugh at … [Read more...] about My Art Auction Musings—Tomorrow on New York Public Radio

---Christa Desrets of the Lynchburg, VA, News & Advance reports that the motion for a temporary injunction to stop the Christie's auctions of four works from Randolph College's Maier Museum (scheduled for Nov. 19 and 29) is to be heard in Lynchburg Circuit Court on Thursday. It's all up to Judge Leyburn Mosby Jr. ---Word arrived from Bloomberg yesterday and the NY Times today … [Read more...] about Links that Stink: Christie’s Maier Sales, Salander Bankruptcy, Walton Effect Redux, Abu Dhabi Museum News

No problem. For Christie's sale tonight at 6:30, you can download software here to watch the action from the comfort of your own computer via Christie's Live. You do not have to register, reveal your net worth or raise a cyber-paddle. Whatever happens to the market, auctioneer Christopher Burge, above, is sure to put on a great show. Similarly, you can view the Sotheby's action … [Read more...] about Can’t Get to This Week’s Impressionist/Modern Sales?

CultureGrrl reader W. Douglass Paschall, curator of collections at the Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia, responds to Hawking the Auctions: An Irreverent Photo Essay: "Sotheby's Blue," the color the auction house is using for this season, looks remarkably similar to the wall color we used at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts for a show of Francis Criss' paintings in … [Read more...] about BlogBack: Now Everyone’s Seeing “Sotheby’s Blue”

The most fun about auction press previews is that interested potential bidders start filtering in at the same time, so you get to see the sales specialists romancing potential clients. This was Lisa Dennison's first chance to work the room for a major sale since she defected from her directorship of the Guggenheim Museum to become a Sotheby's rainmaker. Here she is in a … [Read more...] about Hawking the Auctions: An Irreverent Photo Essay