North America

Christie’s have announced a new themed week of sales in New York next April.

“Button who?” When Shropshire documents consultant Ben Jones was told that an American client was considering selling the clipped signature of Button Gwinnett he reached for the search engine.

This painting, found by John Nye of Bloomfield, New Jersey saleroom Nye & Company Auctions leaning up against a cellar wall, became one of the sleepers of the year on September 22.

Online dealer marketplace 1stdibs has raised between $50m and $60m from venture capitalists Insight Venture Partners, Fortune magazine reports.

An American businessman has been charged in a New York court accused of applying improper valuations to items sold from his art and antiques collection.

Phillips are to begin-streaming their sales live on eBay’s platform for upmarket auctions of fine art and antiques.

Christie’s have announced a major highlight for the upcoming New York auction series. They are offering Amedeo Modigliani’s Nu couché (Reclining Nude) which they have estimated at in excess of $100m.

The collection of the late A Alfred Taubman is to be offered in a series of sales in New York, starting this autumn.

A London dealer has welcomed a new wide-ranging bill aimed at amending the law passed in the US last year banning the commercial trade in elephant ivory.

A study for one of Frederic, Lord Leighton’s (1830-1896) greatest paintings sold to an American private collector for £135,000 at Sotheby’s sale of Victorian, Pre-Raphaelite and British Impressionist Art.

A stolen Auguste Rodin sculpture, recovered after it was consigned to Christie’s in 2011, will go to auction later this year.

The US Court of Appeals has ruled that the California Resale Royalty Act (CRRA) can stand but apply only to sales made within the state and not to those made out-of-state by California residents.

The third annual ‘Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Symposium’ will be held in New York on June 4-6.

The latest Modern and Contemporary art auctions in New York took the market to new heights with $2.73bn (£1.84bn) changing hands over two weeks of flagship sales.

Christie’s evening sale of post-war and Contemporary art last night posted a premium-inclusive total of $658.5m (£445m) as the bumper fortnight of auctions continued in New York.

Mark Rothko’s 'Untitled (Yellow and Blue)' led Sotheby’s sale of Contemporary art in New York last night.

A new high for any work of art sold at auction came at Christie’s New York last night as Pablo Picasso’s ‘Les femmes d’Alger (Version ‘O’)’ sold at $160m (£108.1m).

Antique dealers, collectors, auctioneers and museum representatives gathered in Connecticut last month to oppose a bill seeking a total and uncompromising ban on the sale of ivory.

Like many an antiques dealer, Mark Griffin of Arbatel Antiques lives something of a double life.

It has the highest-ever estimate placed on a work of art at auction. Predicted to fetch ‘in the region of $140m’, Christie’s are offering Pablo Picasso’s ‘Les femmes d’Alger (Version ‘O’)’ in New York on May 11.