US

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.

The April staging of the ‘Philadelphia Antiques Show’, one of America’s premier antiques events, has been cancelled. The fair, faced with falling dealer and visitor numbers in recent years, hopes to return in 2016 at a new venue with a broader exhibitor base.

Stable year-on-year values across art and antique exports as a whole mask major changes in influence among the UK’s trading partners in 2014.

Christie’s evening sale post-war & Contemporary art in London posted a decent performance with some of the biggest names in the market headlining the auction.

The Black Beauty, the prototype for all Gibson Les Paul guitars, will appear at Guernsey Auctions’ February 19 sale in New York.

The owner of leading south Florida auction house Elite Decorative Arts has pleaded guilty to wildlife trafficking and agreed to a fine of $1.5m.

This version of John Constable’s (1776-1837) celebrated painting ‘Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows’ sold for $4.5m (£3.1m) at Sotheby’s Old Master sale in New York yesterday. It was an oil sketch with quite a backstory.

Sotheby's have announced a new buyer’s premium structure in New York. Effective from February 1, the rates will apply as follows:

The heavy volume of snow on the East Coast of America has led to the cancelling and rescheduling of auctions.

Heritage Auctions of Dallas and New York have reported their best year ever in 2014, with sales topping $969m.

David and Lee Ann Lester have cancelled their American International Fine Art Fair in Palm Beach, Florida at the last moment, citing changing market forces.

Philatelic and numismatic specialists Spink have posted annual sales figures of just under £29m.

Delftware experts Aronson of Amsterdam have recently reunited this pair of c.1690 Delft ‘bouquetière’ figures depicting William and Mary.

An example of the first of America’s iconic silver dollars will be on sale at Spink USA later this month.

More than half the receipts from Christie’s inaugural Exceptional sale in New York came from a single lot. And it was one with quite a history.

“It is a somewhat incoherent narrative, which, however, gives Lon Chaney an opportunity to turn up in an uncanny disguise and also to manifest his powers as Scotland Yard’s expert hypnotist. You are therefore treated to close-ups of Mr Chaney’s rolling orbs, which, fortunately, do not exert their influence on the audience.”