Joan Rivers’ lavish jewelry, fine French furniture, Bob Mackie gowns, paintings and other object reflecting her eclectic lifestyle hit the auction block....
Egan Schiele paintings are at the center of a legal dispute in Manhattan filed by the heirs of holocaust victim Fritz Grunbaum. The Nazis plundered his art and sent him to a concentration camp in 1938. But the two paintings have recently resurfaced and may be worth $5.5 million. Grunbaum’s heirs, Timothy Reif and David Fraenkel, filed the complaint this week in Manhattan Supreme Court to block a pending auction of the paintings....
Joaquín Torres-García, a towering figure in modern art, whose influence extended from South America to Europe, will get a major retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City this month. Drawings, paintings, objects, sculptures, and original artist notebooks will be featured, according to the museum. ...
George Reeves’ Superman costume from his iconic 1950s era television show sold for more than $200,000 at a Hollywood memorabilia auction. It was topped only by a space ship model from the original 1977 “Star Wars” movie. The spaceship sold for a record $450,000, according to the auction house. Among other items fetching significant prices were Harrison Ford’s bull whip from his “Indiana Jones” movies. It sold for $204,000. ...
Art museums under the auspices of the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) have created a plan to safeguard rare art and antiquities that are threatened with destruction in war zones. The move was prompted by attacks on ancient, historic sites in the Middle East. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City joined arts organizations around the world in February to universally condemn the destruction of priceless antiquities by Islamic extremists in the Iraq city of Mosul....
Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin and Marc Chagall, and their works will be combined in a new exhibition at the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., bringing together works assembled by two noted Swiss collectors for the first and only time in the United States. The Phillips will exhibit more than 60 celebrated masterpieces by titans of the modern art movement. All were created during the mid-19th and 20th centuries....
Andrew Wyeth’s bucolic painting “Ice Storm” is at the center of a legal dispute evolving out of a 20-year-old New York City art scandal perpetrated by disgraced art dealer David Ramus, who swindled clients out of millions of dollars. Among his victims is Reed Galin, a former TV news anchor, who was a life-long friend of Ramus and college roommate....
Andy Warhol’s sprawling Hamptons estate has hit the market at a price that rivals some of his most famous pop art. Current owner Mickey Drexler, chief executive of J. Crew clothing brand, is asking $85 million. On any given weekend, Jerry Hall, Cheryl Tiegs, Liza Minnelli, Liz Taylor, John Lennon, John Phillips, Mick Jagger, Jackie Kennedy and her sister Lee Radziwill could be found idling on the beach....
Francis Bacon and Andy Warhol are expected to be the stars of the latest auction of contemporary art in London, according to Sotheby’s, which will stage the sale, conservatively estimated to yield $328.9 million. Works by Keith Haring, Joseph Beuys, Tim Noble and Sue Webster will also be included in the July 1,2 auction....
Sotheby’s kicked off the Spring art auctions with the sale of a Van Gogh painting for $66.3 million, the highest price paid for a work by the Dutch artist since 1998, the auction house said. Claude Monet’s water lilies also sold for $54 million. The Impressionist and modern art sale Tuesday, saw Van Gogh’s “L’allée Des Alyscamps” go to a private collector in Asia after heated bidding with at least five other collectors. Van Gogh’s works have always been among the most collectible among Impressionist artists. ...
