Auction: Contemporary Art, March 10, 2009 @Sotheby's

Following up on its success with photographs in its London contemporary art sales last month, Sotheby's has brought together a smaller, less exciting group of images for its lower end New York sale on March 10. (Catalog cover at right.) There are only 10 lots of photography in this sale, for a total estimate of $180000. Here's the breakdown:

Total Low lots (high estimate $10000 or lower): 4
Total Low estimate (sum of high estimates of Low lots): $30000

Total Mid lots (high estimate between $10000 and $50000): 6
Total Mid estimate: $150000

Total High lots (high estimate over $50000): 0
Total High estimate: NA

Since there are only 10 photo lots in this sale, we thought we'd list all of the photographers represented as background:

James Casebere
Andreas Gursky
Anselm Kiefer
Louise Lawler
Florian Maier-Aichen
Shirin Neshat
Cindy Sherman
Laurie Simmons
Hiroshi Sugimoto
Joyce Tenneson

By the way, someone at Sotheby's needs to pay some attention to the "Medium" categories that are found in the sidebar of the auction listings. In this case, only 2 lots in the sale are categorized as photographs, when there are clearly 10 lots that fall into this category. My guess is that someone not familiar with photography is doing the indexing, so lots that are "cibachrome prints" for example are not being captured as photographs. Collectors out there should work through the lots one by one rather than using the index until they make it more accurate.

Contemporary Art
March 10, 2009

Sotheby's
1334 York Avenue
New York, NY 10021