Displaying items by tag: sale

It was a somewhat rocky start to the New York sales Wednesday night at Sotheby’s, as the lots from the estate of its former owner A. Alfred Taubman—breathlessly hyped due to the $500 million guarantee plunked down by the house to win it from its arch-rival Christie’s—often sold at below or barely over their low estimates, with some big-ticket lots not selling at all. The final total came to $377 million, inching past the low estimate for the sale by a few million and casting doubts on whether the auction giant can make back its record investment with the rest of the Taubman sales.

On November24th and 25th, 2015, Sotheby’s London will host a major two-day sale of art and antiques from the collection of the Bernheimers, one of Europe’s greatest art dealer dynasties.

The incredible story of the Bernheimer family is a tale of resilience and constant reinvention. Covering four generations of art dealers, it is permeated with the vicissitudes of 20th century history and, in many ways, charts the evolution of the dealer ‘trade’ over for the last 150 years. The Bernheimer business started with a tiny market stall in Munich in the mid-19th century and swiftly grew into the most illustrious antique and interior decoration emporium in the world, renowned for supplying royalty (e.g. King Ludwig II) and the elites of the time.

On December 15 in London, Christie's will offer Mrs Thatcher: Property from the Collection of The Right Honourable The Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven, LG, OM, FRS -- a rare opportunity for collectors to acquire property from a leading political figure of the 20th century.

In the year that "The Iron Lady" would have celebrated her 90th birthday, approximately 350 historic and personal lots will be offered across two landmark sales: a flagship auction presenting 150 lots in London at Christie's headquarters on Tuesday December 15, and an online only sale comprising 200 lots from December 3 to December 16. These sales are taking place 25 years after Margaret Thatcher (1925-2013) left Office, following an 11-year tenure as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1979-1990).

Musician Sting and wife Trudie Styler are selling more than 200 items from their art collection, previously housed in their former family home in London.

Works by Matisse, Picasso, Gustav Klimt and Ben Nicholson will be offered at auction at Christie's in February, as well as Sting's Steinway piano.

The auction house said the couple had collected the works "with passion and knowledge" over 20 years.

In January, Sotheby’s will offer an American folk art collection with some dark and risqué imagery. The auction consignors, Petra and Stephen Levin, philanthropists based in Florida, had filled their Vermont home with woodcarvings of prostitutes wrapped around clients ($30,000 to $50,000 for two pairs) and a shoeshine boy leering at a female customer’s legs ($30,000 to $50,000). In a diorama of a bar crowded with disheveled drunks ($20,000 to $30,000), cigarette butts are smeared on the floor.

A Richard Avedon photograph has reportedly been withdrawn from an auction at Christie's over complaints by the Avedon Foundation.

The photo, a 1962 portrait of ballet icon Rudolf Nureyev, belongs to ballet dancer Eric Walters, who says he bought it at Christie's in 1995 for just $1,610, according to the New York Post. But when Walters tried to sell the photo this year at the same auction house with a high estimate of $15,000, the Avedon Foundation, which is based in New York, stepped in.

Phillips has been entrusted with the sale of selected artworks by Le Corbusier from the Heidi Weber Museum Collection. The most comprehensive selection of his artworks to be presented at auction, it is offered from the collection of one of his most prominent patrons, Heidi Weber, who housed many of the works in the Heidi Weber Museum / Centre Le Corbusier, her private museum in Zurich designed by the artist and dedicated to showing his artistic works. Consisting of over 50 works and including paintings, sculptures, enamels, tapestries and works on paper, the collection will be offered at various-owner auctions in London and New York over the next three years and is conservatively expected to realize in excess of $30 million.

A. Alfred Taubman, the late billionaire developer and former owner of Sotheby’s auction house, was a boundless art collector whose taste spanned every period, genre and medium, from works of antiquity to contemporary art.

In advance of a series of sales of his 500-piece collection — believed to be worth more than $500 million — Sotheby’s has transformed its building inside and out to give a real sense of its depth and scope.

Though Christie’s elected not to publicly list the estimated sale price for Louise Bourgeois’s Spider (1997), which will be auctioned as lot 10 in the house’s postwar and contemporary evening sale on November 10 in New York, it is high enough to break some major records.

ARTnews has learned that the enormous sculpture will have a low estimate of $25 million and a high estimate of $35 million.

Orazio Gentileschi's Danaë (1621) will arrive at Sotheby's New York this January with an estimate of $25 to $35 million. The 17th-century painting provides a lens to reflect on just how far the Old Masters market has come in the past few decades.

The painting, which has an extensive exhibition history, including shows at the Getty, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Yale University, also has an interesting past in terms of provenance.