Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in On Balance, the ARTnews newsletter about the art market and beyond. Sign up here to receive it every Wednesday.

Amid a sluggish art market and concerns about new tariffs, the design category keeps growing. Earlier this month, as much of the art world was in Basel, the major auction houses each held design sales that outperformed expectations.

Sotheby’s design sales in New York totaled $37.5 million, and Christie’s totaled $23.6 million; Phillips, which staged just one sale in this category this time, brought in $4 million. By comparison, last year, Sotheby’s reported $19.5 million in design sales, Christie’s reported $15.5 million, and Phillips reported $5.1 million across two sales with significantly more lots. Across all three houses, that’s a 62.3 percent year-on-year increase.

Experts told ARTnews there are multiple factors behind the category’s continued momentum for established names and a broad range of artists.

Lewis Wexler, who previously served as Christie’s assistant vice president of 20th-century decorative arts, told ARTnews there has been a “paradigm shift,” with collectors purchasing design in the same way they approach fine art.

“There’s always a demand for lighting, benches, sofas, and things along those lines,” said Wexler, who currently runs an eponymous gallery in New York and Philadelphia. “I think there has been a realization that you can obtain the same quality and caliber in the design world that you can find in the paintings hanging on your walls.”

That awareness has increased due to larger budgets for interior design, notable gallery exhibitions and institutional acquisitions, greater auction data about the investment value of collectible pieces, and the re-evaluation of artists such as Sonia Delaunay and Toshiko Takaezu, both of whom were the subject of major shows in New York last year.

Claire Warner, cofounder of Chicago’s Volume Gallery, which focuses on material-driven art practices and design, told ARTnews that the ongoing “technological revolution” has pushed collectors toward items that are “handmade” and “well-crafted.”

“People’s understanding of this work is becoming much more fluid and not as siloed,” said Warner, who previously worked as a design specialist at the Wright auction house in Chicago.

Betsy Beierle, a senior sales associate at the design gallery Carpenters Workshop, told ARTnews that collectible design has a “cross-market fluidity” that draws buyers from multiple sectors.

“It appeals to art collectors, institutions, people working in design, architecture, fashion, and industrial design,” Beierle said.

Global interest in the category, especially from younger buyers, has also helped many design items exceed high estimates at auction.

At Sotheby’s design sale on June 11, 76 percent of the lots sold above their high estimates. Christie’s and Phillips also noted that a significant number of lots in their sales surpassed high estimates, including the three-pane, six-foot-tall Goddard Memorial Window by Tiffany Studios, which sold for $4.29 million on a $2 million–$3 million estimate. That is the second-highest price at auction for a window from the artist’s studio. Those results are especially notable given the few house and third-party guarantees offered at the sales.

The houses also saw an expanded audience this month, with Sotheby’s and Phillips reporting that more than 20 percent of buyers at their major design sales were new to the houses. Sotheby’s reported a 64 percent increase in bidders compared to last year, and a 76 percent increase in buyers. Phillips noted that millennial and Gen Z collectors made up 20 percent of bidders at its design sales this year.

“At least half the people I sold [Les Lalanne works] to last year are younger than me, which is extremely encouraging,” 56-year-old art dealer Ben Brown told ARTnews, noting his London gallery’s representation of Les Lalanne since 2007 and the ‘Planète Lalanne’ exhibition in Venice, Italy last year featuring more than 150 works. Brown added that he is frustrated that Lalanne works have been categorized as design.

The success of design objects at auction has been apparent even outside of dedicated sales, underscoring their crossover appeal. In May, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Double-Pedestal Lamp from the Susan Lawrence Dana House sold for $7.5 million at Sotheby’s modern evening sale, far exceeding its $3 million–$5 million estimate. But the spike in design interest has been most apparent in the market for works by François-Xavier and Claude Lalanne, as ARTnews reported in April. Four of the top 10 auction sales for works by François-Xavier took place last year, and at Sotheby’s design sale on June 11, Grand Rhinocéros II sold for $16.4 million—his second-highest price at auction.

Meanwhile, the result at Christie’s for the Tiffany Studios window was boosted by recent acquisitions of other large Tiffany windows by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. Dealers told ARTnews that institutions have increasingly acquired design works by both established and emerging artists. For example, Carpenters’s Beierle placed Spanish artist Nacho Carbonell’s One-Seater Concrete Tree (2022) with the Cincinnati Art Museum for its outdoor sculpture garden in 2023, and Marcin Rusak’s Van Florum 23 (Hybridae Florales) at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta last year.

According to Volume’s Warner, when the gallery has worked with institutions like the Art Institute of Chicago and LACMA in recent years, curators from multiple departments—including contemporary art, design, American art, fiber art and architecture—have collaborated to acquire design works, with the idea that they may be used across different exhibitions.

The strength of the design category was also reflected in works priced under $500,000, many of which exceeded their estimates and helped set new artist records at auction this year.

American artist and furniture designer Judy McKie is one who has seen that kind of market bump. At Phillips’ design sale in New York on June 10, the top lot was her Fish Bench, which sold for $406,400 with fees, on an estimate of $150,000 to $250,000—setting a new auction record. By comparison, another edition of the same patinated bronze sculpture sold for $327,600 on a high estimate of $100,000 at Rago Auctions in 2023. Other editions of the bench are in the collection of the Longhouse Reserve, at Eastport Park in Boston, and in a public park in Walnut Creek, California.

Despite institutional acquisitions at places like the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, McKie’s prices at auction and in private sales remain relatively accessible.

“Even with the tariffs, the prices are still more easily digested than Les Lalanne,” said Wexler, who has represented McKie for years. “In fact, I literally just sold a monkey chair this week for $110,000.”

Other auction records in design have been set this year for Louis Cane, Maria Pergay, and Jean Puiforcat.

Expectations of even more growth in the future

Multiple dealers told ARTnews they expect prices in the design category to continue rising as buyers get priced out of works by top names; as design furniture, ceramics, and textiles continue their shift from craft to fine art; and as expectations for masterpieces recalibrate.

Aside from the Lalanne effect, Wexler said the prices for McKie’s bronzes are also likely to rise due to limited inventory. “I think that’s also increasing the desire for collectors to purchase the work,” he said.

Brown similarly believes auction estimates for Les Lalanne works remain too low, particularly when comparing limited-edition masterpieces like Grand Rhinocéros II to other works like the Mouton wool and concrete sheep sculptures.

“You can’t have a situation where a masterpiece is worth 10 times a perfectly nice medium-plus object by an artist,” Brown said, noting the sheep were in editions of 250 compared to the Grand Rhinocéros II, which exists in an edition of 8. “When you’ve got a discrepancy of 10 between a good and a great work, there’s something wrong.”

Brown said he expects more people to understand the appeal of Les Lalanne through his gallery’s upcoming exhibition on the French couple, René Magritte, and Surrealism, opening this fall in New York.

“When you’ve got Lalanne standing next to Magritte and standing up for themselves and looking strong, I don’t think anybody’s doubting that Magritte is a great artist,” Brown said.

Even in a sluggish auction market, the design category—in particular when boasting notable works by Tiffany Studios, Les Lalanne, and Alberto Giacometti—continues to be a bright spot at auction, with Christie’s two recent sales totaling $23.6 Million.

“You’re also appealing to such a broad range of collectors. You’re no longer just in this like, niche group of people,” Carpenters Workshop senior sales associate Betsy Beierle told ARTnews. “Even in a hesitant market, when something’s rare and when something’s scarce, that is definitely going to outweigh any kind of sluggish performing that’s going on.”

On June 12, the single-owner sale ‘American Avant-Garde: The James D. Zellerbach Residence by Frances Elkins’ totaled $8.1 million, while the auction house’s Design sale yielded $15.4 million.

The top lot for the day was the three-pane, six-foot-tall Goddard Memorial Window by Tiffany Studios with an estimate of $2 million to $3 million. After bids between a Christie’s specialist on the phones and an online bidder, the latter won with a hammer bid of $3.5 million, or $4.285 million with fees.

This was the second-highest price realized for a notable work from the artist’s studio, after the Danner Memorial Window sold for $12.5 million with fees at Sotheby’s Modern Art evening sale last November, smashing the old record of $3.4 million for a ‘Pond Lily’ lamp sold by Christie’s in 2018. The Goddard Memorial Window was sold to support the continued advancement of St. Luke’s Church’s missions and endowment.

The result for The Goddard Memorial Window also followed two recent acquisitions of monumental landscape works by Tiffany Studios at major art institutions. In 2023, the Metropolitan Museum of Art acquired the three-part, 10-foot-tall, 7-foot-wide Garden Landscape. Last month, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, announced it had acquired the monumental landscape stained glass window Mountain Landscape (Root Memorial Window).

Out of 34 lots, the vast majority of total for the single-owner sale came from its top two offerings: a pair of Important and Rare ‘Oiseau’, Curved Version, circa 1937 by Alberto Giacometti, both with estimates of $2 million to $3 million. The first of the five-foot-wide plaster bird sculptures realized $2.954 million, while the other sold for $2.833 million, both amounts including fees.

The other two lots from the design sale which surpassed seven figures were works by French sculptor Claude Lalanne. The bronze and copper chandelier Unique ‘Structure végétale aux papillons, souris et oiseaux’ Chandelier, 2000 hammered at $1.5 million, or $1.865 million including fees, on a high estimate of $1.8 million.

Other examples of Structure végétale chandeliers by Claude Lalanne with similar estimates had sold for $2.4 million to $4.4 million at design sales in Paris in 2021 and 2022. While demand for works by Claude Lalanne and her husband François-Xavier Lalanne continues to grow among new collectors, Bierele said the results on June 13 reflected a shift to a “more thoughtful” art market.

“We’re seeing it at art fairs,” she said, noting her decade of experience at Pace Gallery, as well as a director at Rhona Hoffman Gallery in Chicago and as a private consultant before joining Carpenters Workshop in 2022. “People are taking their time, and it’s refreshing. It’s a reset. That’s absolutely what’s happening.”

L’Enlèvement d’Europe, designed in 1990, depicts the Greek god of Zeus transformed into a bull with the princess Europa on his back. The first edition of 6.5 foot-tall, 6.5 foot-long bronze sculpture attracted bids from two specialists on the phones and an online bidder before it hammered at $900,000, or $1.134 million including fees, on a high estimate of $1 million.

When the same edition of L’Enlèvement d’Europe last appeared at auction at Sotheby’s New York on December 18, 2013, it sold for $485,000 with fees, on a high estimate of $350,000.

“It didn’t explode, but I think it’s still fair to say it’s a strong result,” Beierle said, noting the piece’s monumental size, and the first time the artist used the lost cast wax method on a singular sculpture. “A real Lalanne collector is going to want that piece to put a feather in their cap.”

After François-Xavier Lalanne’s Grand Rhinocéros II blasted past its high estimate of $5 million and sold for $16.4 million at Sotheby’s design sale the day before, there were bidding wars for two of the French sculptor’s smaller works at Christie’s, including one in a familiar shape.

Rhinocéros bleu, 1981 zoomed past its high estimate of $70,000 to hammer at $260,000, or $327,600 with fees. Le Métaphore (Canard-Bateau), circa 2002 did even better, surpassing its high estimate of $120,00 by more than 400% after hammering at $530,000 or $667,800 with fees.

Beierle said the results reflected the cheeky, charming, surrealist and fun themes appealing to a growing number of collectors, while being “a little bit easier to live with” compared to Grand Rhinocéros II.

“I think you can very much easily say that you have a rhino, but you can clearly pack that one up and move it to another home, rather than the desk, which obviously is going to be a quite a different lift,” she said with a laugh.

The global art market may still be sluggish, but strong demand for rare pieces by François-Xavier Lalanne helped one signature sculpture sell for $16.422 million at Sotheby’s today.

“Even in this horrible climate, I will be surprised if this doesn’t do well,” art advisor Laura Lester told ARTnews prior to the sale. “There’s always trophy hunters out there.”

Grand Rhinocéros II (2003), a life-size sculptural gold patinated bronze, brass, and leather desk in the shape of the animal, was the featured lot for Sotheby’s Important Design day sale in New York on June 11. It measures more than four-feet wide, 8.5-feet in length, and is two feet in height. The pre-sale estimate was $3 million to $5 million.

The sculpture was the first edition out of eight, and was acquired by the current owners in 2003 from Galerie Mitterand in Paris. The last time Grand Rhinocéros II appeared at auction, the seventh edition sold for €5.5 million with fees on a high estimate of €3 million at Sotheby’s Paris on May 22, 2022.

Bidding for Lot 105 today started at $2.5 million. After 45 bids placed online and by Sotheby’s specialists on the phone over 13 minutes, Grand Rhinocéros II blasted past its high estimate to hammer at $13.75 million, or $16.422 million with fees, to a bidder on the phone.

Today’s auction result for Grand Rhinocéros II is the second-highest for François-Xavier Lalanne. The artist’s record is held by Rhinocrétaire I, which sold for $19.4 million with fees, well past its high estimate of $6.4 million, at Christie’s Paris in October 2023.

The price for Grand Rhinocéros II also exceeds last month’s sale of François-Xavier Lalanne’s Bar aux Autruches (1967-1968) for €11.1 million ($12 million) after an 11-minute bidding war at Sotheby’s Paris on May 20. The bar in the shape of two life-size ostriches and a large egg had an estimate of €3 million to €4 million.

The results are further evidence of ongoing, strong demand for works by François-Xavier and his wife Claude Lalanne by collectors across the categories of design, fine art, post-war and contemporary, impressionist and modern art. “If there was the Venn diagram of all of those collectors, Lalanne is like that little, tiny place where they all meet in the middle,” Lester said. “You just have such a broad cross section of collectors who would be interested in something like this, and they’re very hard to come by.”

It’s worth noting the decline in the artists’ primary market after the sale of more than 700 pieces from the private collections of Les Lalanne and their two daughters, Dorothée and Marie by Sotheby’s and Christie’s during various sales in Paris and New York between 2019 and 2024.

“Now that everything has been dispersed and [François-Xavier and Claude are] both gone, it’s just like you have to wait for them to come up at auction. You really, really do,” said Lester, who had worked with the Lalanne estate when she was a director at Kasmin gallery. “Despite the price tag, despite what a monumental item this is, there’s going to be someone for it.”

While speculative sales of contemporary artworks and works by young artists fell in 2024, women artists, lower-value works, and sales in New York rose, according to the 2025 edition of the Hiscox Artists Top 100 (HAT 100) report.

In 2024, sales of contemporary artworks fell 27 percent, to $698 million in 2024. That figure is down from the $956 million reported in 2023.

Flipping appears to have fallen out of favor, with total sales of “wet paint” artworks (ones sold at auction within two years of being created) by artists under 45 falling 64 percent, to $14.1 million, down from $38.8 million in 2023. The HAT 100 report also noted that the number of works in this category fell to 698 lots from 924 in 2013, and that nearly one-in-five of these did not sell. That’s “the highest proportion in seven years,” the report said.

“With sales at a seven-year low, the speculative fever that took hold in 2022 and 2023 is now ended,” said the report, published by a global specialist insurer Hiscox, with research done by art market research and analysis firm ArtTactic.

Robert Reed, head of art and private clients for Hiscox UK, called these percentage changes “astonishing,” but noted that the HAT 100 report focuses on auction sales data for works of art produced after 2000—”a small segment of a tiny market” compared to the overall art market, the luxury market, or especially a multinational company like Walmart.

“I don’t want to get too obsessed with some of the percentages, because actually, you’re talking relatively small amounts,” Reed told ARTnews. “And relatively small amounts can make quite a big percentage change in a small market.”

Even within that smaller segment of the overall art market, the total sales value of post-2000 artworks priced at over $1 million fell by 41 percent, and the number of these high-value lots also fell 31 percent compared to 2003.

Most of those 2024 sales (51 percent) took place in New York, up from 42 percent the previous year. London also increased its market share to 25 percent compared to 21 percent in 2023.

As a result, sales in Hong Kong fell 52 percent, the lowest level since 2018. The volume of lots sold dropped 24 percent, and the city’s market share declined to 21 percent, down from 32 percent in 2023.

On the positive side, Yayoi Kusama continued her popularity on the auction block, with the highest total sales by a contemporary artist for the second year at $58.8 million. Reed credited the results to the artist’s well-known personal brand with global recognition. “I think that inevitably sustains your market,” he told ARTnews. “And also, she does produce some show-stopping works public spaces, that really do get recognition in a way that an artist producing paintings won’t.”

One big change between 2023 and 2024 was the rise in sales for works by French sculptor François-Xavier Lalanne, who had the second-highest auction sales total by value ($52.9 million), and works by his wife Claude Lalanne, who had the fourth-highest total for female artists ($9.75 million).

“If you said the year before [Les Lalanne] were going to feature so much in 2024, no one would have predicted it,” Reed said.

A big factor in these results was the Christie’s New York auction dedicated to works by François-Xavier last October, which included 70 sculptures from the personal collection of the couple’s daughter, Dorothée. Shortly afterward, François-Xavier’s Herd of Elephants in the Trees Table (2001) sold for $11.6 million with fees during the Sydell Miller evening sale at Sotheby’s New York last November.

Other positive highlights from the HAT 100 report include a 12 percent increase in the number of artists offered by Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Phillips, to 2,602; and more women artists among the auctions among the three houses (822 in 2024 compared to 728 in 2023).

When asked about what the results of the HAT 100 report indicate for auction sales this year—especially after the fires in Los Angeles, the impact of the new tariffs for imports to the US, the ongoing stock market volatility, and predictions of a global recession—Reed compared the current “seismic” moment to aftermath of the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008.

“People will just stop buying and people will stop selling,” Reed said, noting the number of works priced at $10 million or above “completely dried up” in the 12 months after the investment bank filed for bankruptcy, with only two ten-figure lots selling the year afterwards. “The sales volume will really shrink. And then the market always comes back.”

After Brexit, Hiscox is much more conscious about the movement of its own corporate art collection of 1,000 pieces, spread across its 30 offices, and the likelihood of incurring import taxes if items are moved in and out of its European offices. Reed said concerns about a trade war and tariffs will also affect where artworks will be consigned with auction houses. “There’ll be some markets where it’ll be easier to sell art than others,” he said.

On the bright side, 2025 will also have opportunities for anyone still looking for new acquisitions. “If you’re a buyer, this is a buyer’s market,” Reed said. “You are going to have time to make your decisions; you’re not going to be pressurized by dealers.”

“For those that are buying, life is going to be sweet for the next year. The choice might not be as good as it was normally, but life will be sweet.”

Some trends last longer than others, even in a fragmented art market. One of the most notable ones over the last year has been a spike in the market for François-Xavier and Claude Lalanne, whose whimsical sculptures of animals and plants have been the subject of nine-minute bidding wars, generating sale prices that often far exceed these works’ high estimates. 

The prices for sculptures by these artists—also known as Les Lalanne—have grown dramatically, with four of the top 10 sales at auction for works by François-Xavier taking place last year, most of them at Christie’s in New York, according to data analysis by ARTnews.

That rise has been 15 years in the making, according to Edith Dicconson, co-executive director of New York’s Kasmin gallery, which has represented Les Lalanne in the US since 2007.

“Lalanne appeals to everybody, which is amazing. And I think a lot more connoisseurship has come to light,” Dicconson told ARTnews. “I think all of that connoisseurship coming out now is really helping to also find new collectors.”

“In the end,” she said, “once you get one in the room, you start to want more.”

Wendy Cromwell, an art advisor and a member of the Association of Professional Art Advisors told ARTnews that the French couple’s sculptures have broken out of the categories of furniture and design into fine art in a manner similar to works by Swiss sculptor and designer Diego Giacometti. 

“There’s been a movement to include design into the fine art collecting categories, and Lalanne, more than anyone, has shown us and proved [this] to us, along with others,” Cromwell said. “Giacometti furniture is not inexpensive, but I think Lalanne has really taken it to a whole new level.” 

Experts told ARTnews that recent prices at auctionand in private sales have been bolstered by the broad appeal to a wide range of collectors, particularly because of Les Lalanne’s historical connections to Surrealism. (Lalanne was introduced to Man Ray, Max Ernst, and other Surrealists by sculptor Constantin Brancusi, who the couple lived near and were close to.)

Most peg 2009 as the beginning of the shift in the market for Les Lalanne. Even amid that year’s recession, a sale of 10 works by Les Lalanne from French fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent and his partner Pierre Bergé at Christie’s in Paris yielded €7.6 million euros ($9.8 million), more than 38 times its total high estimate of €198,000 ($253,000).

The US market for private sales of Les Lalanne gained momentum in the following years as Kasmin put on outdoor exhibitions on Park Avenue in 2009, at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in Florida in 2011, and in a Chelsea gas station, where it mounted the “Sheep Station” show in 2012. 

The market for Les Lalanne has continued to rise throughout the years since, even as the couple’s large production volume meant that hundreds of works hit the auction block during that period. Between 2019 and 2024, Sotheby’s and Christie’s sold more than 700 pieces from the private collections of Les Lalanne and their two daughters, Dorothée and Marie during various sales in Paris and New York. The sales set several records and yielded a nominal total of $330.2 million.

Jodi Pollack, Sotheby’s global head of design, said the house’s Paris sale “L’Univers Lalanne,” featuring 274 works from the couple’s private collection in 2019, was transformative and a turning point in becoming a “gateway” for many new collectors to become attracted to and engaged in the Lalanne market for the first time. “There were hundreds of people participating in that auction that had never bid before on Lalanne, or even bid before at Sotheby’s,” Pollack said.

However, Ben Walker, global head of modern decorative art and design at Bonham’s New York, cautioned that the Les Lalanne market may be overheated.

“I’ve probably been saying in the back of my mind for a good few years that it’s due a correction, most notably because I think there was so much Lalanne out there,” Walker told ARTnews, observing that buyers have seemed to be less discerning about factors for “A+ works” like good patina, limited edition, and castings made while the artists were alive. 

“With the Lalanne market, it doesn’t seem to matter,” he added. “I don’t think it’s negative. I think it really is an indication about how strong the market is. People will just go for the name.”

Kasmin’s Dicconson said that new and younger collectors of Lalanne typically fall into two types: decorators and true connoisseurs. The latter group asks a lot of questions about an item’s provenance, condition, and edition number, as well as any restoration work done. And these connoisseurs, according to Dicconson, drive bids for notable pieces like ‘Hippopotame II’ Bar (1978), which sold for $7.6 million at Christie’s in May 2023.

Even amid the headline sale results, Sotheby’s Pollack has observed pricing for specific types of Lalanne sculptures shifting, especially for François-Xavier’s life-size Mouton works, depicting sheep and made of concrete and wool. “The pricing for both of those is certainly off from their market highs,” she said. “I think if you look at models that are coming up with greater frequency, you will see that most of those prices are actually trending lower.” 

Still, top works continue to exceed estimates. Prior to last November’s evening sale for the Sydell Miller collection, Pollack expected that the grand sculptural table Troupeau d’Éléphants dans les Arbres (2001) by François-Xavier would sell well beyond its high estimate of $6 million. After more than two dozen bids from Pollack and three other Sotheby’s specialists on the phones, it sold for $11.6 million with fees, marking the second-highest price for the artist at auction. 

The eight-figure price on Troupeau d’Éléphants, according to Dicconson, was driven by the piece’s rare and unusual nature—it weighs more than 2,200 pounds and features a total of seven sculptures by François-Xavier. “You’ve got almost a theater of elephants there that you can place in any way you want,” she said. “I can’t think of another piece of Lalanne like that.”

And while the one sold by Sotheby’s was the second in an edition of eight, only five such works were ultimately made. Miller’s ownership also brought a considerable amount of extra attention. “It was frothy from the beginning, and then you’ve got this super rare piece,” Dicconson said. “And then you get a couple of people on the phone, and there it goes.”

In terms of how Les Lalanne’s market will perform this year, Dicconson told ARTnews that even with the recent drops in the stock market, she still has a list of people looking for rare, top-end items she can’t find.

“People are still looking around,” she said. “So I would say that the market is still quite healthy.”

Another factor that may extend the sales momentum is whether the supply of works from the family and estates becomes a little bit scarcer. “Maybe that would make the prices go even higher,” Walker said. 

New York Collective Hides Authentic Warhol in Sale of $250 Fakes
New York art collective MSCHF is selling nearly 1,000 images of an Andy Warhol drawing—one of which is the original work itself—for $250. The group is selling the stash through a website called the Museum of Forgeries. MSCHF purchased Fairies, the authentic 1954 ballpoint pen drawing, depicting three winged figures; the collective said it is worth $20,000. MSCHF’s 999 copies and Warhol’s drawing are are being billed as a grouping titled Possibly Real Copy Of ‘Fairies’ by Andy Warhol. It could be considered an artwork in its own right, the collective said.

After 150 Years in U.K. Collection, Tiaras Owned by Napoleon’s Wife Come to Auction
Heading to auction from a British private collection, where they have remained for at least 150 years, two tiaras once owned by French Emperor Napolean’s wife Empress Josephine Bonaparte will be sold at Sotheby’s. The items are expected to fetch prices between £100,000–£300,000 when they go up for sale during Sotheby’s London “Treasures” auction on December 7. The items are being sold as part of the U.K. government’s private treaty sale policy. The provision allows for the sale of historical objects to public institutions in exchange for the owner having to pay inheritance tax.

Deidrea Miller to Head Communications Department at Christie’s
Christie’s has tapped Deidrea Miller, a longtime arts public relations executive to serve as head of communications for its Americas branch. Miller will be based in New York. She most recently served as director of Brunswick Arts, where she was advising clients such as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark. Prior to that, she was deputy communications director to New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, overseeing city agencies that dealt with the arts and entertainment.

Eames Museum Wins Rare Gem at Auction
The Eames House, a museum and National Historic Landmark in Los Angeles bought a rare midcentury modern storage unit produced by designers Charles and Ray Eames at a Michigan auction house for $48,000 this week. The piece was sold by a nonagenarian Michigan local, who had purchased it in 1950 for $100. It was estimated at $20,000.

Nicole Eisenman, Sketch for a Fountain (detail), 2017 (cast 2018–19), bronze.

©NICOLE EISENMAN/KEVIN TODORA/COURTESY NASHER SCULPTURE CENTER

Artworks are in constant motion, traveling between galleries, museums, and other art spaces. To track where certain works get shown and how they get acquired, ARTnews has launched a new column, Art en Route, which will showcase significant auction results and report on additions to collections across the globe that may have flown under the radar. Tune in every two weeks for a rundown of some of the most notable acquisitions, loans, and sales in the news cycle. 

One of the most important acquisitions this month may be just a couple years old, though it already has a contentious history. The Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas announced earlier this month that it now owns an edition of Nicole Eisenman‘s five-part sculpture Sketch for a Fountain, which was first presented (and vandalized) at the 2017 edition of Skulptur Projekte Münster, a once-every-10-years sculpture show held in Germany. The private initiative Dein Brunnen für Münster is still working to raise funds to purchase an edition of the work for the German city, and a variant of it will be installed at 401 Park, a new development in Boston, this summer. 

The Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut, has added to its holdings a seven-foot-tall work from Stephen Antonakos’s series of neon canvases—Untitled Neon Canvas (for Michael Krichman), 1986, which features two neon fixtures set against a deep blue background.

In Washington, D.C., the Smithsonian Archives of American Art got Jorge Tacla’s drawings, correspondence, clippings, and papers, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum added a few contemporary pieces to its collection: Do Ho Suh’s Radiator, Corridor/Ground Floor, 348 West 22nd Street, New York, NY 10011, USA (2013) and Nari Ward’s Swing (2010).

The Delaware Art Museum purchased Hank Willis Thomas’s Black Survival Guide, or How to Live Through a Police Riot (2018), a series of screen prints commissioned and exhibited by the institution last summer, along with an 1871 oil painting by Robert Duncanson, the first African-American artist to attain widespread fame, and a 1940 poster by Robert Pious. (That museum reports that 74 percent of its acquisition funds spent in 2018 went toward works by women and artists of color.)

Virginia Overton, Untitled (Black Diamond), 2018, wooden roof trusses, hardware, and wood stain.

COURTESY BORTOLAMI GALLERY

Moving westward, the University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center nabbed Virginia Overton’s sculpture Untitled (Black Diamond), 2018, which debuted at the inaugural Front International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art. And the Walker Art Center has commissioned a new work by Seitu Jones and Ta-coumba T. Aiken for the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. The work, Shadows at the Crossroads, comprises seven sculptures celebrating prominent figures in Minnesota’s history; it will be unveiled next month.

In Los Angeles, the Getty Research Institute got the archives of Claes Oldenburg, which contain 2,000 sketches and collages, 450 diaries and notebooks, photographs, letters, ephemera, and other materials, while the Los Angeles County Museum of Art has acquired eight works, by Luchita Hurtado, Anne Truitt, Huma Bhabha, and others.

Several American colleges and universities have acquired important works. The Harvard Art Museums in Cambridge, Massachusetts, were given 70 sketchbooks of Otto Piene, a founding member of the artist collective Zero, and Emory University in Atlanta received some 1,500 ancient Egyptian and Near Eastern objects, including Late Period coffins and mummies, gilded funerary masks, cylinder seals, gold jewelry, and more.

Across the pond, Tate in London has acquired Yinka Shonibare MBE’s The British Library (2014). The work comprises 6,328 books bound in Dutch wax and has previously been shown at the Brighton Museum and Art Gallery in England as well as at the Diaspora pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017.

The Grosvenor Museum in Chester, England, purchased a 1989 portrait of the Prince of Wales, who is also the Earl of Chester, painted by Tom Wood. A local report noted that the city’s “special relationship” with the crown dates to 1301—a welcome, if obscure, morsel of British history.

The British Museum’s Edvard Munch exhibition “Love and Angst,” replete with loans from the Munch Museum in Oslo, has opened. A black-and-white print of The Scream is among the 83 artworks in the show. As it turns out, the British Museum is itself loaning quite a few significant works to the Macao Museum of Art in China, where drawings by giants of the Italian Renaissance—among them Leonardo, Raphael, and Michelangelo—will be on view through late June.

Over in Scandinavia, a 1915 Ernst Kirchner painting called Das Soldatenbad (Artillerymen), which was restituted by the Guggenheim to the family of the art dealer Alfred Flechtheim, will be loaned to the National Museum of Norway. The work’s current owner is Oslo’s Sparebankstiftelsen foundation, which bought the work at auction for $21 million.

In Germany, Caravaggio’s painted shield depicting the severed head of Medusa (1596–97), which is held in a private collection, will figure in the “Utrecht, Caravaggio, and Europe” exhibition at the Alte Pinakothek in Munich. The show opens on July 21 and also features the Baroque master’s Penitent Saint Jerome (1606) and Fortune Teller (1595–96), among other pieces. Speaking of Caravaggio, the Baroque painter’s Judith Beheading Holofernes, which was recently uncovered in an attic, was recently displayed at Kamel Mennour gallery in Paris. (Some experts have cast doubt on whether the work is truly by Caravaggio.) The work heads to auction in June at the Marc Labarbe auction house in Toulouse, France, where it could bring in as much as $171 million, potentially demolishing the artist’s record.

Otto Piene, Sketchbook: Groton, 2012, mixed media.

©2019 CHARLES STERNAIMOLO

Market intrigue continued at the New York auctions last week. Lee Krasner’s The Eye Is the First Circle (1960) broke the artist’s record when it sold for $11.7 million at Sotheby’s. In the days after the sale, it was revealed that Emily and Mitchell Rales were the buyers, and that the piece was headed to their Glenstone museum in Potomac, Maryland. Rumors about the buyer of Jeff Koons’s Bunny (1986), which sold at Christie’s for $91.1 million, continue to swirl. Many outlets have speculated that collector and hedge fund investor Steven Cohen bought the work, with Robert Mnuchin helping him secure it by bidding on his behalf.

Meanwhile, Sotheby’s sold multiple bronze and stone sheep by François Xavier Lalanne for prices ranging from $150,000 to $2.4 million. Other fine offerings included two Fernando Botero paintings—The Bathroom (which sold for $519,000) and Derechazo (going for $675,000), both of which went up for sale at Christie’s Latin American auction. In the auction house’s American art sale on Wednesday, Edward Hopper’s Windy Day sold for over $1 million, and both Norman Rockwell’s The Homecoming and Marsden Hartley’s Abstraction surpassed $6.5 million.

François-Xavier Lalanne’s Singe Avise (très grand), 2008 (above). Claude Lalanne’s Pomme de Jardin, 2007 (below).

COURTESY THE ARTISTS AND PAUL KASMIN GALLERY, NEW YORK

I would like to make a very big gorilla—very big—who eats dirty shirts,” François-Xavier Lalanne told a reporter in October 1966, on the eve of his show at Galerie Alexandre Iolas in Paris. A primate-cum-clothes-hamper would have been in good company in François-Xavier’s home. The modest apartment he inhabited at the time, with his wife and fellow artist, Claude, was already stuffed with useful beasts: a flock of 24 woolly sheep for plush seating, a 660-pound brass rhinoceros with storage compartments, and a bed in the shape of a huge white bird. Added their creator, “They are not furniture, they are not sculpture—just call them ‘Lalannes.’”

Easy description and classification still evade pieces by the Lalannes, who worked together—almost always in separate studios—from 1956 until François-Xavier’s death in December 2008, at the age of 81. They decided early on to exhibit their creations under the name “Les Lalanne” and never cared much for other labels. “Museums don’t know where to put us,” François-Xavier said in 1998.

Collectors have never had that problem, and interest in the Lalannes’ work continues to gain momentum internationally. Last December saw a new auction record, when a group of ten epoxy-stone sheep, designed around 1979, went for $7.47 million at Christie’s Important 20th Century Decorative Art & Design sale in New York. And on May 4, also in New York, Paul Kasmin Gallery will debut a large exhibition on the Lalannes. “She’s working on all kinds of new things,” says Kasmin, who has represented the artists since 2006, “and there is a fair amount of work that he made that hasn’t been seen, so I’m very much concentrating on that.” Works on view at the gallery will include several of Claude’s “Choupattes,” patinated bronze cabbages perched on chicken feet, with prices beginning at $280,000.

Born in Agen, France, in 1927, François-Xavier attended art school at the Académie Julian in Paris and set up a studio in Montparnasse, where he befriended such neighbors as Constantin Brancusi, Jean Tinguely, and American sculptor James Metcalf. He met Paris-born Claude Dupeux, who studied at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs, at a show of his paintings in 1952. The pair embarked on a series of design jobs—windows for Christian Dior (where they met a young Yves Saint Laurent, who would become one of their greatest patrons), set design for choreographer Maurice Béjart—before having their first “joint solo show,” at Paris’s Galerie J. in 1964. Among the pieces there were a brass rhino desk and Claude’s first “Choupattes.” Metcalf called it “a fine exhibition of contemporary objects useful to the extent you find them useful,” and John Ashbery filed a favorable review for the New York Herald Tribune.

“We started with certain techniques that we developed with time and with which we evolved,” says Claude, now in her late 80s. “The notion of utility is evident from the start. For us, it adds a different way of looking at a work of art.” Their parallel but distinct practices—his deliberate and architectural, hers improvisational and organic—were introduced to American audiences in 1967, when the Art Institute of Chicago hosted a show that included a flock of sheep and La Mouche, a four-foot-long brass fly with Plexiglas wings that open to reveal a handcrafted toilet. In 1972, their foam bed in the form of a can of sardines was exhibited at Leo Castelli’s “Furniture by Artists” show in New York, alongside Donald Judd’s steel tables and Robert Rauschenberg’s rubber-tire lamp. Critics were intrigued, but many viewers didn’t know what to make of the Lalannes’ meticulously crafted zoomorphic sculptures at a time when abstract art prevailed in the United States.

In the following decades, as the couple racked up retrospectives and commissions in France, their pieces gradually entered American collections through the championing of interior designers like Jacques Grange and Peter Marino and began to show up more frequently at sales of decorative arts and design in New York. Kasmin’s exhibitions, including a 2009 display along Manhattan’s Park Avenue, have stoked the American market for Les Lalanne, while dealer Ben Brown has reintroduced their works to London collectors. His 2007 exhibition of bronze creatures and leafy furniture was the first Lalanne show in England since 1976.

At the farm in Ury, France, where the couple moved in 1967, Claude continues to create tables draped in bronze crocodile skins, called “Crococonsoles,” and vermeil necklaces made from electroplated lettuce leaves. Kasmin remembers his first visit to the Lalannes’ sprawling, wisteria-swaddled world (about an hour’s drive from Paris) as an immersive experience. “I became aware that this home was an industrious environment, as there would be at least five or six people welding and doing all kinds of metalwork in the workshop and the cobbled courtyard,” he writes in his introduction to Claude and François-Xavier Lalanne: Art. Work. Life., a book of photographs coming out in May from Skira Rizzoli. “The sculptures in the house and gardens were never the same on any visit.”

As for the recent auction record at Christie’s, Kasmin describes his reaction as “surprised but not that surprised,” explaining, “With Lalanne, once people decide that they want something, they’re determined to get it. There have been a few occasions where results have gone completely crazy, and it’s people that just want the work.”

“We’ve seen very strong prices for Lalanne going back to 2005 and 2006 at auction, and it is the blue-chip thing of the market these days,” says James Zemaitis, director of Sotheby’s 20th-century design department. Lalanne pieces, in fact, emerged at the top of the December design sales at both Christie’s and Sotheby’s.

At the peak of the latter’s auction was the Lalannes’ sleek bronze Centaure, which sold for $542,500, nearly double its high estimate. The seven-foot-tall half-man, half-horse, executed in 1983, was a rare collaboration between husband and wife. “Our architect friend Paul Chemetov was in charge of building the French embassy in New Delhi. He wanted us to make a sculpture for the embassy as long as we built it together,” Claude says of the statue’s genesis. “François made the animal, and I made the man.”

Stephanie Murg is a New York–based writer covering art and design. She blogs at UnBeige.com.