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---In case you were maybe thinking of bidding on Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat or Takashi Murakami during this week's big contemporary sales, please be advised that they are on Richard Feigen's hitlist of nine overvalued artists, published today in Bloomberg. Feigen is a knowledgeable, veteran dealer who is always a helpful source for journalists … [Read more...] about Overheated Art-Market Links: Does Anyone Know What’s Going On?

The Rosetta Stone, 196 BC, British Museum I guess maybe I was wrong when I indicated that the British Museum is reluctant to lend the Rosetta Stone to Egypt, for fear that it may never come back. In the third part of Richard Lacayo's interview with the director of the British Museum, published in the Time art critic's Looking Around blog, Neil MacGregor said: The Egyptians have … [Read more...] about MacGregor Considers Egypt’s Rosetta Stone Loan Request

I think the time that the Metropolitan Opera's music director, James Levine is spending at his other job (leading the Boston Symphony Orchestra) is beginning to take a toll on orchestral discipline and choral excellence in New York. On Saturday night, I attended the luxuriously cast performance of "La Traviata" (an opera I haven't seen in at least a decade, because I tend to … [Read more...] about Met Opera’s Pit Exposed; Luciano’s Costumes Deflated UPDATED

In this post, I commented on serious issues raised in an in-depth Wall Street Journal article by the veteran, highly respected art-market writer, Alexandra Peers. The article described changes, of which I had been previously unaware, in auction-house practices regarding the buyer's premium charged to successful bidders. In subsequent conversation with me, officials of both … [Read more...] about In the Matter of the Buyer’s Premium

The amount of risk involved in auction-house guarantees to consignors (whereby the house agrees to pay the guaranteed amount in the event that bidding does not reach that level) has been the subject of much recent speculation, in light of the failure to sell of several high-ticket guaranteed works in Wednesday's Impressionist/modern sale at Sotheby's. Sotheby's latest Form 10-Q … [Read more...] about Details on Guarantees Disclosed in Sotheby’s Quarterly Report

Now that the Greeks, emboldened by the imminent completion of the New Acropolis Museum, have ramped up their rhetoric calling for the return of the Acropolis marbles, the British Museum's director, Neil MacGregor, who had previously sounded nominally receptive to the idea of lending the marbles to the new museum (if the Greeks accepted British ownership), appears to have ramped … [Read more...] about Acropolis Acrimony: MacGregor Condescends to the Greeks

Bill Ruprecht, president and CEO of Sotheby's, this morning used his third-quarter conference call with financial analysts to try to bolster the confidence of the company's stock investors and the broader art-market public, who were spooked by Wednesday night's shaky Impressionist/modern performance. He revealed that the auction house had suffered a $14.6 million pre-tax loss … [Read more...] about Sotheby’s Conference Call: Striving to Quiet Art-Market Fears

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