How's Sotheby's Doing? And Who's at the Fairs?

On March 1, you can find out about Sotheby's financials, when its earnings report for 2006 will be released. Only publicly traded Sotheby's, not privately held Christie's, releases details on profits (as distinguished from gross totals of public auction sales).

Meanwhile, Sotheby's stock hit $40.50 on the NY Stock Exchange this morning, then backed off. The last time its closing price reached $40 was May 13, 1999.

Does the smart money know something? Or are we just feeling ebullient today, because there are so many art fairs this week in New York? ("Why not collect some art-auction stock, dear, while we're in a buying mood?")

As the increasingly indispensable Kate Taylor recently reported in the NY Sun:

Seven art fairs is a first for Manhattan. It's a reflection of the strength, or some would say giddiness, of the art market, and the tendency for collectors today to focus their buying activity during a handful of major events a year.

She also got some tasty quotes from Pace Wildenstein's Arne Glimcher:

If I had my druthers, there'd be no art fairs. Collectors, who used to spend a great deal of time looking for works, comparing quality, are now involved in event and destination shopping.

Glimcher denounced Art Basel Miami as "the most vulgar art event I've ever been to."

I knew there was a good reason why I didn't go there!

But now all that terrible vulgarity is right across the river! I can literally see 55th Street and the Hudson, site of The Armory Show, beckoning from my office window. The important collectors are already there, snapping up the choicest works before the hoi polloi shuffle in.

So I hope my blog readers will excuse me, while I take a little time off today for bad behavior. But don't worry. I'll get high-minded again tonight by attending the third and final installment of Tom Stoppard's The Coast of Utopia.

Let's see, where are we now: Moscow? Paris? No, Herzen's in London!