Rago Arts and Auction Center
March 10
Folk art three-panel screen from Vancroft Lodge, W. Va.
Estimate: $30,000–$50,000
Price fetched: $180,000
When Joseph B. Vandergrift went to build Vancroft, his hunting lodge-cum-manse on the banks of the Ohio River in 1901, it’s fair to say that the Standard Oil heir was living large. His 500-acre, million-dollar shangri-la included a bowling […]

Sotheby’s London
Andreas Gursky, 99 Cent II, diptych
Estimate: $1.8 million–$2.4 million
Price fetched: $3.3 million
Warning to readers: I feel a rant coming on. As you may have read in an earlier post, I was incredulous when Andreas Gursky’s mural-sized 1999 photo 99 Cent sold for $2.2 million last May at Sotheby’s, nearly four times Gursky’s previous record. […]

Photography has been on a tear this week. At Christie’s, twelve new world auction records were set for artists like Robert Mapplethorpe, Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, Horst P. Horst, Brassai and Henri Cartier-Bresson. Since his death last year, Avedon’s prices have started to climb, with three of his more bankable commercial images making the top […]