Displaying items by tag: private sale

The Cleveland Museum of Art has boosted its smallish but choice pre-Columbian collection significantly by acquiring a dozen rare and important gold objects of a type that once lured Spanish conquistadors to the New World.

Bought in March in a private sale arranged by Sotheby's in New York for an undisclosed price, the gold pieces will go on view at the museum in a special exhibition starting Saturday May 16. The museum plans to install them in the pre-Columbian galleries by August, after making room by adjusting space in display cases.

Just in time for Thanksgiving, Seth Kaller, one of the world’s leading dealers in rare historic documents, will exhibit and offer for sale George Washington’s Thanksgiving Proclamation in conjunction with Leigh Keno, President of Keno Auctions, now through November 26.

The Thanksgiving Proclamation is priced at $8.4 million, and is the only example in private hands. The only other Washington-signed copy was acquired by the Library of Congress in 1921. The document was offered at Christie’s on November 14, 2013, where it was expected to sell for upwards of $12,000,000. Kaller represents the document’s owner, who has decided to offer the manuscript through exhibition and private sale.

Seventy paintings that span the 15th to the 20th centuries from the collection of the Spanish investor Juan Abelló and his wife Ana Gamazo, including works by El Greco, Francisco Goya, Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, are due to go on show in the US for the first time. “The Abelló Collection: A Modern Taste for European Masters” will open at the Meadows Museum at the Southern Methodist University in Texas next year, 18 April-2 August.

A key work in the show is Francis Bacon’s "Triptych," 1983, one of the artist’s final works in the format, which Abelló acquired in 2008 through a private sale.

Katya Kazakina puts a lot of guess work together to postulate what might have happened in the private sale of three of Bunny Mellon’s paintings, two of the nine Rothkos the Mellons once owned and a Richard Diebenkorn. The Rothkos were the monumental 10 x 15 foot No. 20 (Yellow Expanse) which the late David Anfam described as the “the jewel in the crown.” The 1953 painting was casually valued at $125m as early as 2010. The conjecture that the group were sold for $300m—and that’s just conjecture as you will see below—would suggest that No. 20 was sold for $200m or more:

Alexander Forger, the executor of Mellon’s estate, confirmed in a telephone interview that three paintings had been sold. He declined to identify the paintings, the price or buyer’s identity, citing confidentiality agreements.

From September 10-18, Christie’s auction house will host a pop-up exhibition of post-war and contemporary art in downtown Los Altos -- an affluent community in California’s booming Silicon Valley. Passerelle, a local real estate and urban planning firm, helped organize the show, which will present major works by Roy Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns, Richard Diebenkorn, and Tracey Emin as well as cutting-edge contemporary art. The exhibition will include works available for private sale as well as highlights from the upcoming fall auctions in New York.

A panel discussion titled “StART Up: Beginning (and Growing) Your Art Collection” will be held on September 13.

Leonardo da Vinci’s “Salvator Mundi,” which was discovered by American art dealer Alexander Parish at an estate sale in the mid-2000s, was sold to an unidentified collector for between $75 million and $80 million in May 2013.The details of the sale, which was organized by Sotheby’s, remained confidential until this week.

“Salvator Mundi,” a half-length portrait of Christ holding a crystal orb in one hand, was created around 1500. Since 1900, the heavily over-painted canvas was attributed to Boltraffio, an artist who worked in da Vinci’s studio. It wasn’t until Parish acquired the work and it underwent extensive cleaning and research that it was deemed an original da Vinci formerly owned by King Charles I of England. Prior to last year’s sale, Parish and two other art dealers shared ownership of the work.

In 2012, after raising tens of millions of dollars, the Dallas Museum of Art attempted to buy “Salvator Mundi.” Museum officials made a formal offer to Parish and the painting’s other owners but were rebuffed after some discussion.

On Sunday, December 1, Sotheby’s wrapped up Beijing Art Week, a series of sales that marked the company’s first commercial auction in mainland China. The auction house offered $212 million worth of western and Chinese art, jewelry and furniture in three private sales and an auction.

During the Modern and Contemporary Chinese Art auction on Sunday night, a record was set for Chinese-French artist Zao Wou-Ki. the artist’s 1958 oil-on-canvas abstract work, which was sold by the Art Institute of Chicago, brought $14.7 million. Wou-Ki’s previous record was set on October 5 during a sale at Sotheby’s Hong Kong when a work sold for $11 million.

China is home to the fastest growing art market and the success of the Beijing sales indicates that there are active buyers on the mainland.

The Department of Justice has restrained Pablo Picasso’s (1881-1973) Compotier et taste (1909) on behalf of the Italian government. The request is part of an ongoing investigation that Italian officials have been conducting. The painting, which is worth $11.5 million, is tied to Gabriella Amati and her late husband, Angelo Maj, who were charged by the Italian Public Prosecutors’ Office with embezzlement and fraudulent bankruptcy offenses. The restraining order was sought in connection with the criminal proceedings.

Amati and Maj, along with a public official in Naples, are accused of misappropriating tax receipts for the city. The trio also planned schemes to embezzle Naples’ tax revenue and fraudulently claimed refunds to Naples taxpayer to make transfers to their own bank accounts seem legitimate. The city of Naples lost approximately $44 million due to Amati and Maj’s schemes.

The Picasso painting, which was recovered by special agents in New York while it was being offered for private sale, will remain in the court’s jurisdiction. The U.S. is working closely with the Italian Public Prosecutors’ Office to forfeit the painting to Italy. Restraining the painting will hopefully help recovered the millions of dollars Naples lost because of Amati and Maj.