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(Bloomberg) -- It's been prophesied for years, and now it's finally come to pass: Auction prices for fine art are falling. At Christie's Fineberg sale, one of Wool's striking, colorful word paintings was estimated at $15 million to $20 million, and sold for just $10 million with premiums. Similarly, at Christie's, the stand-alone evening auction of the late real estate investor Gerald Fineberg's collection carried a presale estimate of $163 million and ended with a disappointing hammer total of $124.7 million; premiums brought it to $153 million. [Extracted from the article]

"There have been enormous crowds", says Sharon Mintz, a senior Judaica specialist in the books and manuscripts department at Sotheby's, speaking ahead of the sale. Funds for the acquisition were supplied by a donation from Alfred Moses, an attorney and diplomat, and the Moses family. (Bloomberg) -- A 1,100-year-old Hebrew Bible has sold for $38.1 million at Sotheby's in New York. [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg) -- Despite vigorous criticism about the Nazi-era origins of Heidi Horten's wealth, an auction of the late Austrian billionaire's jewelry became the most expensive public sale in history. The first auction totaled 138 million Swiss francs ($155 million), already setting a world record for a single-owner jewelry sale. [Extracted from the article]

It's not just Christie's: The Sotheby's Hong Kong handbag sale in April had a 91% sell-through rate, with 50% of sold lots going for above their high estimate. The Collectibles Market Is Cooling. "As a general trend, the collections with higher-than-average values also saw higher-than-average value depreciation, as the top of the watch market was most affected by the downturn", the report states. [Extracted from the article]

For decades the UK's major arts organizations have tried to redirect their funding from government support toward private donations. (Bloomberg Businessweek) -- For decades, the Glyndebourne opera company would travel to towns and cities around the UK with a group of top-notch singers giving world-class performances. [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- After November's unprecedented New York auctions, which included the standalone Paul Allen estate sale ($1.5 billion spent on art in about three hours), almost everyone agreed the market needed a break. As a result, the coming May evening sales - widely considered the companion to the November sales in scope, price and quality - will be a comparatively subdued affair, auction house specialists predict. [Extracted from the article]

Out now, Harper Business Bad Summer PeopleBy Emma Rosenblum Rosenblum, a former editor at Bloomberg Businessweek and now chief content officer at Bustle Digital Group, nails the formula for a beach-book blockbuster. (Bloomberg Businessweek) -- The right book is critical for a summer vacation. [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg) -- In the mid 1990s, Lennart Mengwall had a problem: Specifically, his four children were getting older, and he wanted them to stick around. Asked Mengwall, the co-chief executive officer of Primix Solutions, an internet services firm. There was already a 1950s-era house on the property which, as promised, Mengwall dramatically refashioned, creating a roughly 8,500-square-foot house with seven bedrooms and eight full baths. [Extracted from the article]

Wool's work will be joined by a commission from the sculptor Charles Ray, often considered an artist's artist who broke into the mainstream with a highly regarded retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art last year. (Bloomberg) -- About a month before his 39-foot-wide mosaic is set to be unveiled inside a lobby at Two Manhattan West, an office tower across from New York's Moynihan Train Hall, the artist Christopher Wool is feeling a little jumpy. [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg) -- This September, Sotheby's London will host an expansive sale from the late pop superstar Freddie Mercury, with an estimated 1,500 items to be sold over the course of six auctions. Austin has occupied the house ever since, and has "cared and loved these objects very carefully over the years", says David Macdonald, head of single owner sales at Sotheby's London. [Extracted from the article]

Still, these prices are dwarfed by yet another sports memorabilia sale at Sotheby's in 2022, when someone paid $10.1 million for Jordan's "Last Dance" jersey worn in game one of those '98 finals. This particular pair, according to Sotheby's release, was the final pair of Air Jordan XIII Breds (shorthand for "black and red") that "Michael would ever lace up in an NBA game." (Bloomberg) -- A pair of Michael Jordan's sneakers from his famous "Last Dance" season set a world record Tuesday selling for $2.2 million at Sotheby's. [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg) -- For the first half of the movie Paint, I couldn't figure out why everything seemed so familiar. The only person seemingly immune to his charms is station employee Katherine (Michaela Watkins), who, we learn, was once and perhaps still is Nargle's great love. [Extracted from the article]

In a 2022 State of the African Art Market report [ PDF] by the industry site Imo Dara, some 75% of collectors surveyed responded that "now is a really exciting time to collect [classic African] art." "When you're buying African art, it means that you love Africa", says the Paris dealer Dulon. Here's What Dealers Know. [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg) -- A collection of five very rare editions of William Shakespeare's works will be offered at the New York International Antiquarian Book Fair (April 27-30) with an overall asking price of $10.5 million if purchased as a group. The copy of the first collected edition of Shakespeare's Poems is also extremely rare, according to Harrington, who says there are about 65 copies extant and only five in private hands. "The 400-year anniversary of Shakespeare's First Folio being produced and printed has been coming at us for a few years, and I've been trying to work out a way of how to do it", says Pom Harrington, the owner of the rare book dealer Peter Harrington in London, which is selling the group. [Extracted from the article]

Edvard Munch lived in Berlin in 1892-95, and three of his paintings are in the show, including his fantastic The Death Bed, from 1895, whose composition, the exhibition catalog suggests, can be traced to Gauguin's 1888 Vision of the Sermon, which is also exhibited. The show posits that before the likes of Monet, Renoir and their kindred literary, musical and philosophical spirits arose around Europe, modernism was still embryonic. (Bloomberg) -- It will be useful, as you enter the National Gallery's new blockbuster spring/summer show, "After Impressionism: Inventing Modern Art", to think of the Impressionists as part of the modern art world's Big Bang. [Extracted from the article]

But here we are, entering the show's fourth and final season (it premiers March 26), with three of the four Roy children stuck in Los Angeles, which I believe is Succession's shorthand for purgatory. Patriarch Logan Roy, played by Brian Cox as a thinly veiled Rupert Murdoch, slowly lost his mind while his children and staff jockeyed for power. (Bloomberg) -- When HBO's Succession first aired in 2018, it was billed as a modern day King Lear. [Extracted from the article]

Private Sales Made Public In an unprecedented move, the auction house disclosed a glimpse into its propriety private sales data in the report. "An auction house's private sales data gives us a little window into a part of the market we don't have access to", says Anders Petterson, the founder and chief executive officer of ArtTactic. [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg) -- Even before the lawyer Mark Mueller bought his first historic home in Austin, Texas, he "always tried to live in one, or rent one", he says. Using the Houses The use of each building changed over time, Mueller says. [Extracted from the article]

It has put on a recent string of blockbuster exhibitions, including a critically acclaimed Warhol show in 2018-2019, a sweeping Jasper Johns retrospective in 2021-2022, and, most recently, the crowd-favorite Edward Hopper's New York. (Bloomberg) -- The Whitney Museum's longtime director Adam Weinberg will step down this October, closing out a 20 year run in the role. [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg) -- Sidney Frank Importing Co. is credited with popularizing Jägermeister in America, but it became a globally renowned success story when it created Grey Goose vodka in 1997 and sold it to Bacardi for "closer to $3 billion" in 2004, says Sidney's nephew John Frank, who was vice chairman of the company at the time of the sale. Now, 14 years later, with his kids out of the house and his primary residence in Florida, Frank has decided to sell. Through acquaintances, Frank met the architect Paul Marchese, the onetime chief architect of the World Trade Center who'd set up shop in town. [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- The new art-world docu-competition series The Exhibit: Finding the Next Great Artist opens with introductions. Khan, Kahn and five other artists are there to compete for the honor of a "career-defining" exhibition at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington and a $100,000 cash prize. [Extracted from the article]

(Bloomberg) -- When a Guarneri "del Gesù" violin known as the "Baltic" hits the auction block at Tarisio on March 15-16, bidders won't be vying over its sound alone. Yet, unlike other collectibles that double as investments (stamps, coins, paintings), the Baltic actually does something - namely, produce the extraordinarily rich, deep, resonant sound for which Guarneri's violins are known. "The two makers that define the market in terms of value and recognition are Stradivarius and Guarneri del Gesù", Tome says. [Extracted from the article]

"We came to this estimate because this is the most significant document or manuscript to come up for sale in, I don't know, forever", says Sharon Mintz, a senior Judaica specialist in Sotheby's books and manuscripts department. (Bloomberg) -- A Hebrew Bible billed as the oldest nearly-complete example in the world is set to hit the auction block at Sotheby's New York this May with an estimate of $30 million to $50 million. [Extracted from the article]