The month of September inaugurated a new historical moment, due to the failure of Lehman Brothers Holding Inc., historical society active in financial services. Since then we have witnessed the collapse of world stock markets and observed various consequences for every sector. With a degree of optimism it was hoped that the art market could have maintained its stability, but from the latest auctions it can be inferred that the great cold of the economic crisis is affecting even this sector.

The Contemporary Art Evening Sale, which took place on 14th May at Sotheby’s New York, was a record auction from every point of view. Firstly, for its turnover: 362,037,000 dollars, well above the best estimates which expected the auction to realize between 288.1 million and 354.7 million dollars. This is the second best result ever achieved in the world for a contemporary art auction and the most important sale in the history of Sotheby’s. 73 lots of the 83 presented were sold and represented 86.8% of the works by value.

Article translated by Amritee Mahabir

Last October, the death of Ileana Sonnabend launched an upset in the art world. A woman of refined taste, for decades she was the point of reference for contemporary art, defined by the critic Achille Bonito Olivia as “the greatest gallerist of the second half of the XX century”.