Update on Crichton Cache at Christie’s: No Guarantees

© Michael Crichton, photographed by Jonathan Exley

After I put CultureGrrl to bed for the weekend, I received the answers to questions that I had sent to Christie's regarding its upcoming sales of works from the estate of the late author Michael Crichton (discussed here: Christie's Beats Sotheby's in the Market-Share Game for 2009).

I had speculated in Friday's post about whether that consignment was part of what Christie's chief executive Ed Dolman was referring to when he recently told Bloomberg's Scott Reyburn that guarantees of prices to consignors would be "coming back" this year.

Sung-Hee Park, a Christie's spokesperson, said this to me about the Crichton consignment:

There are no guarantees on the [individual] works or the [entire] collection.

According to Park, the Crichton consignment consists of about 97 works---approximately 30 in the May evening contemporary sale; 48 grouped in their own section of the May day sale for less important contemporary works; 14 in the Apr. 26 prints sale; 5 in the Apr. 15 photographs sale.

The presale estimate for the entire collection is yet to be announced. In its Feb. 5 press release (no longer on the auction house's website) in which it announced the May sale of four works from the collection (prior to the more expansive press release about the Crichton consignment, dated Mar. 2), Christie's had put the estimates for those four highlights (by Johns, Rauschenberg, Lichtenstein and Picasso) at about $30 million.

Bloomberg's Philip Boroff, who wrote here about Sotheby's recent financial filings and its conference call with stock analysts, has another story today about the discussion during the conference call about the restoration of chief executive Bill Ruprecht's salary to its level prior to a voluntary pay cut that he took last year.

Speaking of executive compensation, this blog's CEO extends her warm thanks to CultureGrrl Repeat Donor 117 from Beacon, NY, who sent his contribution specifically in appreciation of this post on the legal battle over Barnes Foundation. (The donor has no connection with the Barnes, nor with the opponents who have legally challenged the move.)

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