A Look at Last Weeks Sales

ArtTactic takes a quick look at the NYC modern, post war and contemporary art sales. The sales totals at Sotheby's, Christie's and Phillips are up nearly 29% from the May sales of last year.

ArtTactic reports

The post-war and contemporary art evening sales in New York this week raised a total of $757,480,000* (excluding buyer’s premium), against a total pre-sale estimate of $636,390,000 to $846,890,000. The sales total between Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips was up 27.9% from May 2016, and 32% above the November results last year. This result reinforces the market recovery that started during London auctions in March this year.

Christie’s kicked off the post-war and contemporary evening sales in New York with a 69 lot strong Post-War & Contemporary Art Evening Auction* on the 17th of May, which achieved $388.6 million. This was comfortably within the pre-sale estimate range of $337.7 million to $468.8 million and 12.9% above their sales total in May 2016.

On the following evening (18th of May) Phillips had their evening sale*, which achieved a total of $92 million. The sale ended up towards the lower end of the pre-sale estimate range of $87.7 million to $111 million and was up 138.9% from their May sale in 2016. Sotheby’s followed later the same evening with their Contemporary Art Evening Sale. The auction achieved a hammer total of $276.9 million, putting it above the pre-sale estimate range of $211 million to $267.1 million. Sotheby’s result was up 32.1% from May 2016.

Source: ArtTactic