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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

Twice in the last few days, I heard art-market pundits equate art with stocks. What's wrong with this picture? In this podcast, I'll look ahead to the crucial major art sales coming up in the next two weeks, compare sale results thus far this year with results for the same period in 2006, and debunk a few myths. If all goes according to plan (which it seldom does), you'll hear … [Read more...] about Auction Podcast: Are Paintings the New Hot Stock Picks?

Brace yourself. Click on this Associated Press story and you will see photos of the uncovered face of Tutankhamun's mummy. Anna Johnson reports: Archeologists carefully lifted the fragile mummy out of a quartz sarcophagus decorated with stone-carved protective goddesses, momentarily pulling aside a beige covering to reveal a leathery black body. The linen was then replaced over … [Read more...] about The Face of King Tut Displayed

Vogel's Pick: Signac, "Cap Canaille, Cassis," 1889 All of you NY Times readers who are heading over to Sotheby's this weekend on the strength of Carol Vogel's first-paragraph assertion (in her front-page Sunday "Arts & Leisure" article) that you can now ogle Jeff Koons' "shiny, bright-red dangling heart," please turn right around and come back on Nov. 10. It's been taken off … [Read more...] about Auction Blooper: Who Stole Carol Vogel’s Heart? UPDATED

Sotheby's David Norman smiles for the camera. Picasso's bronze "Dora Maar" doesn't. I know, I know. You want CultureGrrl to give you some inside insights about how the art market will fare at the big Impressionist/modern sales next week and the big contemporary sales the following week, so that you can decide just how many millions you ought to shell out. But I'd rather let … [Read more...] about Upcoming Sale Predictions: A Crystal-Ball Anthology

Red figure loutrophoros (ceramic), attributed to the Darius Painter. South Italian, Apulian, ca. 335-325 B.C. Image courtesy of the Princeton University Art Museum As I previously reported, the Princeton University Art Museum determined which works it should send back to Italy based on a "matrix" that took into consideration, among other things, "connection to individuals and … [Read more...] about More on the Princeton Give-Backs: “Looting Matters” Digs for Provenance

Photo of François Boucher, "Reclining Girls and Cupid," Confiscated Collection: R 360 (Rothschild Collection, France) The National Archives yesterday announced the discovery of two original leather-bound albums of photographs documenting art looted by the Nazis during World War II. Both will be donated to the Archives by Robert Edsel, author of "Rescuing Da Vinci" and president … [Read more...] about Provenance Alert: Two Rediscovered Nazi-Loot Photo Albums Go to National Archives

On Zahi Hawass' "Wanted" List: "Bust of Prince Ankhhaf," Egyptian, Old Kingdom, 2520-2494 B.C., Boston Museum of Fine Arts In his revealing Al Jazeera television interview, posted today on ArtsJournal's home page, Zahi Hawass, secretary general of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, unintentionally demonstrated why the British Museum; Louvre; Pelizaeus Museum, … [Read more...] about Rosetta Stone: Why the British Museum Distrusts Hawass

On the Block: Childe Hassam, "Sunset at Sea," 1911, Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University Auction houses always tout museum consignments in their presale press releases, because of the cachet and higher market value that distinguished provenance confers. Not so in the press release (click on Nov. 29) for Christie's upcoming American paintings, drawings and sculpture sale, … [Read more...] about Christie’s is Cagey about Maier Museum Provenance, Discloses the Rose