News
“Stan” the Tyrannosaurus Rex Kills at Christie’s Auction
Eclipsing its projected price tag of $8 million, a T. rex named Stan sold for a whopping $31,847,500.
Christie's
Art
The Sale of a Rare, Gold-painted Qur’an at Christie’s Raises Questions of Provenance
Experts have criticized auction house practices that prioritize dropping the hammer on sales rather than on looters or art smugglers.
Opinion
A Benin Bronze With Fishy Provenance Goes to Auction
While conversations about historic monuments ignite public debate, a small sculpture which was likely looted heads to auction at Christie’s Paris.
News
How 3D Scanning Technology Went from the Louvre to the Auction House
Adapting scanners used to analyze the Mona Lisa, a Canadian tech company is entering the art market with a crucial blockchain partnership.
Art
“Your Money Is Safe in Art”: How the Times-Sotheby Index Transformed the Art Market
In 1967, Geraldine Norman was tasked with leading an editorial collaboration between the London Times and Sotheby’s. The project galvanized the conceptualization of art as an investment asset.
In Brief
Shifting Precedent, Buyers of Art Will Now Pay Resale Royalties in France
After several appeals, the country's highest court agreed that auction houses may ask buyers to pay a levy — a decision critics say will “disrupt competition” and damage the art market.
Art
What Happened When a Long-Lost Michelina Wautier Painting Failed to Sell at Christie’s
A recently discovered work by a long-overlooked Baroque painter didn't attract the interest that Christie’s prestigious Old Masters auction seemed to expect.
Opinion
Will Blockchain Create a More Transparent Art Market or Merely Entice More Investors?
This week, Christie's announced that it would pilot blockchain technology to record its fall auction season, but will the digital ledger system solve the market's transparency problems?
News
After $31 Million Sale of 3,000-Year-Old Assyrian Relief, Experts and Artists Denounce Christie’s
Critics call the recent sale, which shattered previous world records for Assyrian art sales, a callous example of the art market profiting from suffering in the Middle East. Experts speculate that ISIS's destruction of cultural heritage sites may have boosted the value of the work.
News
Christie's Sells "AI-Generated" Art for $432,500 As Controversy Swirls Over Creators' Use of Copied Code
Before the auction, Christie's refused journalists' requests for comment on the questionable attribution of the AI-generated artwork. Now, the code's original creator, a 19-year-old working at Stanford, has publicly voiced concerns that the tech group misrepresented their moneymaking intentions.
News
Christie’s Expects $51M for One of China’s ‘Da Vinci’ Scrolls, But Provenance Questions Remain
Centuries before Wester Europe coined the term, "renaissance man," artist Su Shi moonlighted as a pharmacologist, gastronome, and statesman for the Song Dynasty.
Interview
Leonardo Had Help: Oxford Art Historian Asserts New Attribution for 'Salvator Mundi'
Matthew Landrus believes the painting, which Louvre Abu Dhabi bought at auction for $450.3 million in 2017, better resembles the work of Bernardino Luini, an assistant in Da Vinci's studio.