Sotheby's and Christie's show positive gains in mid-season sales; Christie's has 27% new buyers in first half of 2019.

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Sotheby’s Contemporary Curated = $32.68m

Cecily Brown, Untitled #17 (2006) $425,000

Sotheby’s September Contemporary Curated sale was up slightly from last year’s strong event when $30.9m in art was sold. This year, Cecily Brown, Kerry James Marshall and Ed Ruscha led the sale. Among the stand out performances was Martin Wong’s Ten Brooklyn Storefronts which sold for $884,000 over a $80k high estimate. Wong’s previous record was in the low six figures. But based upon the work’s museum quality, at least according to the chatter among Wong fans, Sotheby’s Charlotte Van Dercook felt the work was “like a piece of history—ahead of its time in a lot of ways.” Still, brimful with confidence about the piece. Van Dercook only allowed herself to hope for a price like $300k which would have been a neat doubling of the record price.