sothebys

The frightening battles in Egypt have Americans peppering museums with questions about what's going on there. At the same time, antiquities authorities in Egypt are warning museums and auction houses to be on the alert for people trying to sell looted items.

A 24.8-carat pink diamond was sold in an auction for a $46.2 million on Tuesday, the most money ever paid for a jewel, auction house Sotheby's said in a statement.

An Andy Warhol painting of an old-fashioned Coca-Cola bottle sold for $35.36 million at a Sotheby's auction of post-war art. The sale of 54 works raised $222.4 million including commissions, Reuters reported. Ninety-one percent of the works found a buyer. "In this new market, it was a huge...

Andy Warhol's Self-Portrait garnered a record $32.6 million price at Sotheby's. It wasn't the only record breaker at the sale, signaling buyers' rising confidence in the market.

Recession? What recession? Plenty of cash is flowing into the art market, even as the economy struggles to get back on its feet. Now, with Picasso's "Nude, Green Leaves and Bust" garnering a record price, has the market recovered?

Christie's International says expects to have a better year in 2010 than it did in 2009. Yet there are degrees of recovery: Though the practice of guaranteeing minimum prices is poised to return, sellers won't see a swift return to the prices objects fetched at auction in 2007.

Ask any investor, and he'll tell you the best place to enter the market is at the bottom. Buy low and sell high, right? The institutional crowd knows this lesson best, and after a rocky year in traditional financial markets, many are now drawn to what seems to be the market bottom for a more...

The 2008/2009 art market ended seven years of astonishing price inflation. By the end of 2008, contemporary art suffered a price decline of 27.1 percent, followed by another 4 percent drop in the first half of 2009, according to ArtPrice's new report, Contemporary Art Market: The ArtPrice Annual...

The fine-art market has shrunk for the past five quarters. With prices plunging, auction houses have been looking for any positive sign they can find. ArtPrice is chiming in with its own bit of good news. The Art Price Global Index, it says, increased 4.97 percent in the second quarter. While this...