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.

Daniel Lelong, the French gallerist who developed deep relationships with some of the most important and influential modern artists of the 20th century, died this morning at the age of 92.

“He lived a long, good life.” Mary Sabbatino, vice-president and partner at Galerie Lelong & Co., told ARTnews. She started working with Lelong in 1990. “It’s always sad, you know, but it’s not a tragedy. It really was a big life. He enjoyed his life. You could feel that all the time. He always had a smile. He was really happy being an art dealer.”

Jean Fremon, the gallery’s CEO and remaining original partner, told ARTnews in an email, “What can I say? Daniel and I have been business partners for the last 50 years. Anyone who knew Daniel would remember him as a warm and positive person.”

Fremon noted that Lelong had stepped back from daily work at his namesake gallery in the last 15 years but the two men kept a close relationship “until these last days”.

Born in 1933 in Nancy, France, Lelong studied law and worked as a civil servant at the Conseil d’État. Then-influential French art dealer, collector, and publisher Aimé Maeght invited Lelong to draft the statutes of what would become the first contemporary art foundation and museum: the Marguerite and Aimé Maeght Foundation.

Lelong called the experience “a thrilling adventure.” “There was no model for such status: no contemporary art or modern art foundation existed in France, back then,” he told Flash Art in 2014.

The foundation opened in 1964, and Lelong asked to be placed on leave from his job, during which he started working full-time at the Galerie Maeght.

At the gallery, Lelong was assigned administration tasks like transportation, insurance, and financial matters. He also worked on exhibitions for many artists who would become modernist icons: Joan Miró, Alexander Calder, Marc Chagall, Alberto Giacometti, Antoni Tàpies, Francis Bacon, and Eduardo Chillida.

In 1981, Maeght died, and Lelong become director of Galerie Maeght-Lelong alongside Jean Frémon and Jacques Dupin. It became Galerie Lelong & Co. in 1987. They opened a location in New York in 1985. There was also a location in Zurich.

“He was an art dealer from a different time, right?” Sabbatino said. “He showed at the first Art Basel in [1970]. So much of the history of the, I would say, the mid 20th century from the 60s onward, which is lost to a lot of people, right? Because  the people who lived through that, who are alive, are very few.”

“He really loved life. He was a very positive person. He always looked on the bright side. He really liked artists. He liked people. This seems like a minor characteristic, but actually it infiltrated, every way he ran the gallery. He was really interested in people, and he enjoyed them, and he enjoyed selling. He had this little book where he kept all his sales going back to the ’60s.”

Throughout his career, Lelong continued to develop deep relationships with artists such as Jaume Plensa, Jannis Kounellis, and Sean Scully. “Pierre Alechinsky, is like, the same age as Daniel and his, his whole career has been at the gallery,” Sabbatino said.

Lelong also built sold many works to major collectors like Norman Braman, Joseph H. Hirshhorn, and Jon Shirley. “The Bramans’ house in Florida, all those Calders, all those Mirós, came from his long friendship with Daniel,” Sabbatino said. “He always would say, ‘Joe Hirshhorn would come to the gallery and he’d buy the whole show.’ Many works in the Hirshhorn [Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C.] came from Galerie Lelong, or a number of them, of certain artists.”

“He was very instrumental in building many collections.”

Lelong also wrote and published books, including one on Calder and several volumes of Miró’s catalogue raisonné coauthored by his daughter Ariane Lelong-Mainaud.

Outside the gallery, Lelong’s other interests included a love for music and singing. “He gave concerts,” Sabbatino said with a big laugh. “I remember my first Léo Ferré survey album came from him as a gift. [He] was a friend of his.”

He also brought art to one of the world’s most famous tennis competitions. In 1980 Lelong and former French tennis player Jean Lovera came up with the idea of bringing art to the French Open through a partnership between Galerie Lelong & Co. with the French Tennis Federation and the Roland Garros Committee. Each year, a different contemporary artist is chosen to design the official poster for the tournament. Valerio Adami and Eduardo Arroyo were the first two artists chosen. Miró designed the poster in 1991 and Tàpies was chosen in 2000.

Notably, Sabbatino said Lelong’s focus was only on the primary market for his artists. “Once I said to him, ‘you know, Daniel, you know, you’ve sold every great Miró and Calder all over the world. Why don’t we ever try to sell them again?'”

He told Sabbatino, “That’s another career, and that’s not mine.”

Lelong died in hospital after being sick the last few days. While the retired gallerist had been homebound for the last couple of years, Sabbatino said he was still happy. “I spoke to him on his birthday,” she said. “They were singing. He had champagne. He looked on the bright side of everything.”

Sotheby’s modern art evening sale in New York on Tuesday night collectively hammered at $152 million, or $186.4 million with buyer’s premium, across 60 lots. Fifty works sold, for a sell-through rate of 83.3 percent. Roughly 40 percent of the lots exceeded their high estimates, with half appearing at auction for the first time. The result was strong given a cooling art market as of late, though the night’s high-profile miss cast a long shadow.

Among the top lots was Pablo Picasso’s Homme assis, which sold for $15.1 million against an estimate of $12 million to $18 million. (All prices listed include buyer’s premium unless otherwise stated.) From the artist’s “Musketeers and Matadors” series, the 1969 painting was won by a bidder in the room.

Georgia O’Keeffe’s Leaves of a Plant, which had never been auctioned before, was among the many lots that turned into a contest, reaching nearly 30 bids before selling for $13 million, comfortably above its $8 million to $12 million estimate. René Magritte’s La Traversée difficile just cleared its low estimate to land at $10.04 million, while Alexander Calder’s Four Big Dots, a black-painted metal mobile from 1966, hammered at $6.7 million after deep bidding in the room, for a total sale price of $8.3 million. Paul Signac’s Saint-Georges. Couchant (Venise)—in private hands for over 70 years—sold for $8.1 million, a new auction record for one of the artist’s Venetian scenes.

While the sale notched solid prices for works by blue-chip figures, the post-sale talk was certainly dominated by the failure of Alberto Giacometti’s Grande tête mince to find a buyer. The 1955 bronze bust of the artist’s brother, Diego, had been widely touted as the priciest work of the spring auctions, with expectations set north of $70 million. Offered without a financial guarantee by the Soloviev Foundation, the work opened bidding at $59 million. There were a handful of interested parties, or so it seemed. And after a few minutes of tugging auctioneer Oliver Barker was able to coax a bid of $64 million out of the room. (Very possibly, these were so-called chandelier bids, ghosts on the sales floor.)Then, after a pregnant pause, Barker split the bid for someone who hoped $64.25 million might be the lucky number. But, the seller seemingly had a price in mind that Barker couldn’t reach.  

The pass marked a rare public defeat for a Giacometti of this caliber, which was cast during the artist’s lifetime and is believed to be the only painted example in its edition. More than a few people gasped audibly after Barker dropped the hammer and declared the work “a pass.” Those gasps turned into awkward applause followed by a flurry of conversation in the usually pin-drop quiet room.

Barker, ever the pro, continued on with the next lot, Lyonel Feininger’s Trompetenbläser I (Trumpeters I) over the din, which quited down once the Feininger sold for a hair over its high estimate, at $5.08 million. That the season’s top lot was a nonstarter suggests that even works with stellar provenance by blue-chip artists are not immune to hesitation at the very top of the market.

“Christie’s did a better job securing and placing its top lots, successfully getting them across the line,” adviser Peter Bentley Brandt told ARTnews. “The failed sale of the Giacometti will give future estates pause on which direction they will want to move in. That said, the results also underscore continued strength in the sub–$5 million segment,” Brandt said, “particularly in design, where interest remains robust.”

Sotheby’s CEO Charles Stewart, speaking after the sale, insisted the result wasn’t cause for alarm. “It was a genuine auction moment,” he told ARTnews. “The seller believed in the work and was willing to let it go without a guarantee. That’s rare today. It’s better than watching 20 lots engineered to sell on a single bid.” While Stewart emphasized the value of price transparency and risk-taking, the outcome highlighted the limits of relying on prestige and condition alone. “Nobody lost money,” he added. “The work didn’t sell, but it goes back to the owner. They’re fine.”

One of the more closely watched elements of the evening was the group of works from the estate of Rolf and Margit Weinberg, Swiss collectors whose holdings were billed as “connoisseur-driven” and spanned Impressionism and early modernism. Paul Cezanne’s Portrait de Madame Cézanne sold for $7.4 million, the second-highest price ever paid at auction for a portrait of the artist’s wife, Hortense. Henri Matisse’s Le Bras brought in $4.2 million, while Wassily Kandinsky’s Anfang (Beginning) hammered at $2.1 million. Egon Schiele’s Gewitterberg sold for $2.2 million. Edvard Munch’s Portrait of Heinrich C. Hudtwalcker, also from the Weinberg collection, was chased by five bidders before selling for $1.9 million to a collector in Asia. While those results didn’t break records, they did validate to an extent Sotheby’s emphasis this season on historical depth, long provenance, and a careful mix of pricing and presentation.

In contrast to the Giacometti, some of the night’s most aggressive bidding came not for a painting but for a lamp. A Frank Lloyd Wright double-pedestal lamp, designed in 1904 for the Susan Lawrence Dana House in Springfield, Illinois, sold for $7.5 million after a 10-minute bidding battle, nearly quadrupling the price it achieved when it last appeared at auction in 2002. The sale also more than doubled Wright’s previous auction record, set in 2023. The lamp is one of only two of its kind—the other belongs to the Dana-Thomas House museum—and Sotheby’s had presented it as a crown jewel of early American design. It did not disappoint.

Starting at $2.5 million, Barker worked the room with visible energy as the number of bids climbed past 30, eventually reaching $6.1 million before hammering at that price. At one point, light applause broke out in the room, followed by a noticeable exodus: at least 15 people got up and left, as if they’d seen what they came for.

This newer strategy of placing a design piece in a modern art evening sale seemed to work as Sotheby’s intended. The Wright result follows a precedent set in November, when a stained-glass window by Tiffany Studios sold for $12.4 million at Sotheby’s, a new record for the atelier founded by Louis Comfort Tiffany. Commissioned in 1913 for an Ohio church, the Danner Memorial Window marked the first time a major Tiffany work appeared in a blue-chip evening sale alongside works by the likes of Monet and Picasso.

Together, the Tiffany and Wright results point to a shift in how Sotheby’s is positioning design, as a rising category with the potential to attract a broader class of collectors. If the Giacometti bust revealed the limits of demand at the very top, the lamp proved that scarcity and narrative still drive action.

“I’m sure this will be seen as a disappointment, especially with the Giacometti,” adviser Maria Brito told ARTnews. “But at the end of the day, Sotheby’s, just like Christie’s, is a powerhouse. Selling almost $200 million in art in one night is impressive.”

Still, Brito noted the sale leaned toward “B+” material and lacked the cohesion of Christie’s 20th-century sale the night before. “It felt padded,” she said, pointing to several second-rate works rounding out the evening. But she also saw opportunity. “Now is a great time to buy. There were a lot of opportunities on that sales floor.”

A 1955 bronze bust by Alberto Giacometti that carried a $70 million failed to find a buyer at Sotheby’s modern evening auction in New York on Tuesday.

The cover lot for the sale’s online page, the Giacometti reportedly came from the estate of real estate magnate Sheldon Solow, who died in 2020. Shown at the 1956 Venice Biennale, the sculpture was previously owned by Marguerite and Aimé Maeght, who had it on view in their eponymous foundation in southern France.

Auctioneer Oliver Barker started the bidding for the work, which was offered without a guarantee, at $59 million. Though a handful of bids got the price up to $64 million, the lot was pulled after four minutes without being sold. (The probable cause was that the seller had set a minimum reserve price above that, most likely the $70 million estimate upon request.)

“Sales are often managed and orchestrated but this was an organic auction moment,” Sotheby’s CEO Charles Stewart told the Wall Street Journal. “But we stand by the importance of the work.”

Works by Giacometti have long been seen as the most blue-chip of trophy pieces for collectors, regularly selling for eight figures or more. The artist’s auction record currently stands at $141.3 million, more than double the bust’s estimate; that price was achieved in 2015 when ARTnews Top 200 Collector Steven A. Cohen bought Pointing Man (1947).

Another work by Giacometti has also recently been in the news, as part of a legal dispute between collectors David Geffen and Justin Sun. According to the lawsuit, Le Nez, which Sun bought for $78.4 million at Sotheby’s in 2021, was sold without his knowledge to Geffen. Geffen has responded by saying that the lawsuit constitutes nothing more than “seller’s remorse” on Sun’s part.

Ahead of Tuesday’s sale, Sotheby’s said of the work in its catalog essay for the sale, “Grande tête mince is Alberto Giacometti’s masterpiece.” Made as a tribute to the artist’s brother, Diego, the work shows “the definitive expression of his quest for a new sculptural language, one that captures the artist at his most evocative and haunting.”

That pre-sale buzz, however, didn’t seem to convince any buyers.

Correction, May 14, 2025: An earlier version of this story reported that the Giacometti didn’t garner a single bid. While there were some bids, the work was ultimately passed on.

The ongoing legal bout between crypto billionaire Justin Sun and entertainment mogul David Geffen over Alberto Giacometti’s Le Nez has officially entered its maximalist phase. What began as a dispute over an $80 million sculpture now involves accusations of art fraud and forged documents, discussion of the crypto market’s collapse, and allegations that an art adviser has been detained in China.

The sculpture in question—a bronze, steel, and iron piece Sun purchased for $78.4 million at Sotheby’s in 2021—was allegedly sold to Geffen without his knowledge by former adviser Sydney Xiong. In February, Sun filed suit in New York, where the sculpture currently resides, claiming that Xiong executed the sale using fictitious lawyers and forged documents, walking away with “hundreds of thousands of dollars” for herself.

Geffen responded with a 100-page countersuit in April, calling Sun’s claim “bizarre and baseless” and attributing the dispute to “seller’s remorse.”

In a recent filing, Sun’s legal team claimed that Xiong has been detained without bail since February at the Dezhou Detention Center in Shandong Province, China. “It is highly unwise for Mr. Geffen to have staked his case on his proclaimed innocence of Sydney Xiong,” Sun’s lawyer William Charron told ARTnews in an email. “Ms. Xiong confessed to her theft, she was arrested in China and is in detention in China today.”

Sun’s lawsuit claims that Xiong diverted Le Nez to an art storage facility in Delaware operated by dealers David and Cole Tunkl. The piece was then allegedly sold to Geffen for $10.5 million in cash and two unidentified paintings, which Sun was expected to sell to make up the balance—despite him never authorizing the transaction, court filing say. Sun says he only ever agreed to sell Le Nez if the price was north of $80 million.

Geffen’s filing, meanwhile, alleges that Sun and Xiong failed to offload the two paintings at a profit, and then tried to claw back the Giacometti by fabricating a legal claim. The countersuit also points to what it claims are inconsistencies in Sun’s narrative: no police report was filed, WhatsApp messages were deleted, and Sun’s lawyers received conflicting information about when, how, and even if the alleged fraud occurred. Xiong, Geffen’s team notes, remained listed as the director of Sun’s APENFT platform months after the initial lawsuit was filed.

And then there’s the matter of APENFT itself. Sun previously alleged that he’d donated Le Nez to the platform (and even retweeted their thank-you message), but later claimed he never actually did. In 2023, the work was loaned to the Institut Giacometti in Paris, with no clear trail of how or why it left Sun’s hands.

Geffen’s camp also seized on Sun’s recent financial and reputational trouble. Between the crypto crash, a $115 million hack of his platforms in 2023, and an SEC civil fraud case still in play, Sun’s credibility, Geffen argues, is far from unassailable. The countersuit cites multiple lawsuits by former employees accusing Sun of forcing them to engage in unethical or illegal business practices.

Sun, for his part, remains adamant. “Geffen is clinging to the fiction that Sydney Xiong was not a thief,” Charron said in a statement. “More very compelling details will come out through the fullness of this litigation.”

Sotheby’s has landed a major prize for its May 13 modern art evening sale in New York: Grande tête mince (Grande tête de Diego), a 1955 bronze bust by Alberto Giacometti, estimated at more than $70 million.

The work was hand-painted by the artist as a tribute to his brother Diego, Giacometti’s lifelong muse and studio assistant. It is the most high-profile lot announced so far for the spring auctions, exceeding a Piet Mondrian painting, estimated to sell for around $50 million, that will appear at Christie’s as part Leonard Riggio collection, which that house clinched back in February.

Next month’s sales will be a crucial test for the art market. Auction totals have declined for two consecutive years amid global economic uncertainty, and concerns over tariffs and stock market volatility have deepened the mood of caution. Few estates have consigned major works, and according to market watchers, many private sellers are opting to sit out.

The 25-inch-tall bust is being offered anonymously, but according to Artnet News, it comes from the estate of real estate magnate Sheldon Solow, who died in 2020. It’s being sold through the Soloviev Foundation, the nonprofit established by Solow’s son, Stefan Soloviev.

The sculpture was exhibited at the 1956 Venice Biennale and remained on view for nearly two decades at the Fondation Maeght in southern France before Solow acquired it from Galerie Maeght in 1980, according to the Sotheby’s.

Simon Shaw, Sotheby’s senior adviser for Impressionist and modern art, described Grande tête mince as one of Giacometti’s most formally radical and emotionally charged works. Shaw noted the rarity of this particular cast—the only known version with a richly painted surface—and emphasized its “profound meditative presence,” according to Artnet News.

The bust is one of six casts. Market precedent is strong: another version sold for $53 million at Christie’s in 2010, and another brought $50 million at Sotheby’s in 2013. (Final prices include fees; presale estimates do not.)

The higher estimate this time reflects both the quality of this specific cast and Giacometti’s rising market profile Shaw told Artnet News. In 2015, Pointing Man sold for $141.3 million, setting a record for both Giacometti and any sculpture at auction, while Le Nez fetched $78.4 million more recently. (Back in February, that sculpture became the center of a legal battle between collectors Justin Sun and David Geffen.)

Grande tête mince (Grande tête de Diego) will be on public view at Sotheby’s New York galleries from May 2 through May 13, ahead of its appearance in its modern art evening sale.

According to Artnet News, the Soloviev Foundation has pledged two other major works—Amedeo Modigliani’s Almaisa (1916) and Mark Rothko’s Untitled (Red, Orange, Red), from 1967—as collateral for a loan through Christie’s art financing program. Two private dealers familiar with the works told the outlet they would be estimated together at around $100 million.

In the latest blue-chip art world lawsuit, Hong Kong–based cryptocurrency mogul Justin Sun is suing billionaire collector David Geffen for the return of an Alberto Giacometti sculpture, Le Nez, claiming it was sold out from under him by a rogue art adviser in an elaborate scheme of forged signatures and fictitious lawyers.

Sun, who purchased the Le Nez at Sotheby’s for $78.4 million in 2021, alleges that his former adviser, Xiong Zihan Sydney, orchestrated the sale to Geffen without his consent, fabricating documents and even impersonating a lawyer via email to push the deal through. 

Now, Sun wants his sculpture back—“or substantial damages.” Geffen’s attorney, Tibor L. Nagy, told the New York Times, which first reported the news, that the complaint was “bizarre and baseless,” and suggested that Sun simply regrets the deal. 

The complaint does not contain any allegations that Geffen had any contact or connection with Xiong. “Deals get done through intermediaries,” Nagy said. “If Mr. Sun is now, a year later, unhappy with the deal his intermediary got him, that’s no basis for a claim against Mr. Geffen.”

Sun’s lawsuit, filed on Tuesday in Manhattan federal court, claims that while he had expressed interest in selling Le Nez for a profit, he never authorized Xiong to finalize any transaction. Nevertheless, she allegedly brokered a deal between January and March of 2024 with Geffen’s representatives, via the art dealers David and Cole Tunkl. The deal saw the sculpture exchanged for two paintings valued together at $55 million plus $10.5 million in crypto—far below Sun’s target price and allegedly without his approval. 

Adding to the intrigue, the lawsuit asserts that Xiong used the cash portion of the deal to string Sun along, presenting it as a “deposit” from an imaginary buyer while holding back $500,000 for herself when she transferred the funds from her crypto wallet to Sun’s. Sun claims he only uncovered this in December when he pressed Xiong on the sale’s lack of progress.

The case raises questions about how deals get done in the art world. It bears more than a little resemblance to Russian billionaire Dimitri Rybolovlev’s lawsuit last year against Sotheby’s, whom he accused of fraud in the sales of artworks worth tens of millions of dollars. In that case, Sotheby’s came out clean. The auction house directed much of the blame toward Yves Bouvier, Rybolovlev’s art adviser, who was working to his own benefit as an art dealer behind the billionaire’s back, earning millions in the process. 

According to Nagy the litigation is at least misguided. At worst, it’s an attempt to hide reality, and a review of the complaint showed no allegations that Geffen had any contact or connection with Xiong. “Which means there is no basis to rescind the deal,” he said. “This is exactly how deals get done.”

Sun’s lawyers argue that Geffen’s team should have spotted “obvious red flags” before proceeding—chief among them the lawyer Laura Chang, whom Xiong allegedly enlisted to oversee the sale conducting business via a personal Gmail account. The complaint questions whether the lawyer actually exists.

William L. Charron, a lawyer for Sun, told ARTnews, “Sydney Xiong confessed to theft. She repeatedly forged Mr. Sun’s signature and fabricated the existence of a lawyer. Legitimate art transactions—let alone ones worth tens of millions of dollars—simply don’t occur that way.”

Sun, no stranger to headline-grabbing art transactions, previously made waves by purchasing—and then eating—a Maurizio Cattelan’s banana piece Comedian. Whether he’ll be forced to swallow this latest art world entanglement remains to be seen.

Sotheby’s will offer three artworks from the collection of Harry F. Guggenheim as part of its Modern Evening sale in November.

The proceeds of the three works, Alberto Giacometti’s bronze sculpture Buste (Tête tranchante) (Diego), Franz Marc’s painting Das Lange Gelbe Pferd and Paul Gaugin’s ceramic sculpture La Femme noire, will benefit the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation.

“Harry Frank Guggenheim exhibited an extraordinary drive for innovation, with contributions that profoundly influenced the very fabric of American life. These works, which will be coming to the market for the first time in nearly 70 years, serve as a testament to his bold vision, offering rare insight into the personal tastes of a man who was so critical in shaping modern art as we understand it today. They present a unique opportunity for collectors to continue in that esteemed legacy,” Sotheby’s senior director and international specialist Fergus Duff said in a press statement.

The three works are the first consignment announcement from the auction house for its fall marquee evening sales in New York.

Buste (Tête tranchante) (Diego), a sculpture of Giacometti’s brother, was acquired in 1955 soon after it was cast and was loaned to the Guggenheim Museum that year for the Swiss artist’s first museum exhibition. The “knife-blade” sculpture has an estimate of $10 million to $15 million.

Franz Marc’s colorful painting of a yellow horse, Das Lange Gelbe Pferd (1913), was created right before the beginning of World War I. Its estimate is $8 million to $12 million.

Paul Gauguin’s La Femme noir (1889) was made by the artist after a visit to the island of Martinique in 1886. The glazed ceramic work depicts a Martiniquais woman with a male head on her lap. The work is coming to public sale for the first time and carries an estimate of $700,000 to $1 million.

In addition to Harry F. Guggenheim’s role as chairman of the board of trustees at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, the American businessman and former US ambassador to Cuba championed Frank Lloyd Wright as the museum’s architect, drove important acquisitions for the institution, help build its programming strategy, and conceived of the Guggenheim International Award for groundbreaking artists.

The Harry F. Guggenheim Foundation is a non-profit organization which “supports work in the social and natural sciences and aligned disciplines to increase understanding of the causes, manifestations, and control of violence in the contemporary world.” It was founded in 1929.