S.I. Newhouse’s Brâncuși Sells at Christie’s for Record-Breaking $107.6 M.
Constantin Brâncuși’s Danaïde (1913), a bronze head formerly owned by media magnate S. I. Newhouse, sold at Christie’s on Monday for a $93 million hammer price, totaling $107.6 million with fees and setting a new auction record for the artist. The bidding opened at $82 million and concluded after about half a dozen bids, with the work selling to the guarantor represented by Maria Los, Christie’s deputy chairman and head of client advisory Americas. The result surpassed Brâncuși’s previous auction record of $71.2 million, set at Christie’s New York in 2018 for La jeune fille sophistiquée (Portrait de Nancy Cunard) (1928/32). Christie’s noted that six bronze casts of Danaïde exist, with four in institutions including the Centre Pompidou, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Tate, and Kunst Museum Winterthur, and described this as the only gilded example still in private hands; the sculpture’s provenance traces back to Eugene and Agnes Meyer’s 1914 purchase at Alfred Stieglitz’s 291 Gallery, and Newhouse acquired it in 2002 for $18.2 million.
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This story was covered in Billion-Dollar Museums, Billion-Dollar Bids