At Christie's spring auctions in New York, Jackson Pollock's painting "Number 7A" sold for approximately $181 million and Constantin Brancusi's sculpture "Danaïde" fetched around $108 million, both setting records. The works came from the estate of publisher S. I. Newhouse, who died in 2017. Christie's total sales for the evening exceeded $1 billion, while rival Sotheby's had sold several hundred million dollars' worth of art the previous week. Christie's enlisted actress Nicole Kidman to promote the Brancusi piece.
The record-breaking sales underscore the enduring strength of the high-end art market, particularly for blue-chip modern masters. The results also highlight the aggressive competition between Christie's and Sotheby's for major estates and the use of celebrity endorsements to generate buzz. Meanwhile, a concurrent Brancusi exhibition at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin—the first comprehensive show of his work in Germany in 50 years—connects auction excitement to institutional scholarship.