The Seattle Times reports that the Seattle Art Museum (SAM) has received gifts totaling more than $1 billion in art, donated by numerous collectors including Richard and Elizabeth Hedreen who gave Bartolom Esteban Murillo's Saint Augustine in Ecstasy. The gifts encompass works by Brancusi, Georgia O'Keeffe, Mark Rothko, Morris Graves and others, with about 200 pieces going on display in SAM's new downtown expansion. The Wright collection of postwar and contemporary art from Virginia and Bagley Wright is highlighted as a major longtime promised gift to SAM.
Damien Hirst was crowned the world’s most expensive living artist after Sotheby’s in London sold Lullaby Spring for £9.65 million. The auction followed Lucian Freud becoming the most expensive living European artist at Christie’s, and Hirst’s record surpassed Jasper Johns’ earlier world auction record of £8.74 million in New York.
Damien Hirst’s Lullaby Spring, a pill cabinet from 2002, sold for £9.6 million ($19.2 million), setting a living-artist auction record. The sale at Sotheby’s London brought £72.4 million ($144 million) with 66 lots sold from 72 offered; Francis Bacon’s Self Portrait (1978) fetched £21.6 million ($43 million), the artist’s second-highest price. Other notable results included Tracey Emin and Keith Tyson works among NSPCC donations and a winning £1.1 million for Hirst’s Beautiful Explosion of Vanity Painting.