US

Art market insiders are expecting a dramatic change in the dynamic at the top end of the sector if a remarkable $3.7bn bid to buy Sotheby’s completes this year.

The offer price from Patrick Drahi represents a premium of 61% to Sotheby’s closing price on June 14 and a 56.3% premium to the company’s 30-day average share price.

The first American flag believed to have been planted on Omaha Beach in northern France on D-Day proved to be the top lot in Heritage’s (25% buyer’s premium) Arms & Armor, Civil War & Militaria Auction on June 9.

Uncut and partially unopened, a truly exceptional presentation copy of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species… sold for a record $400,000 (£316,353) in a recent US sale.

A pre-press version of a key map of colonial America emerged for sale at Swann Auction Galleries in New York on June 6. Carrying an estimate of $30,000-50,000, it sold at $100,000/£76,900 (plus 25% buyer’s premium) – a sum that reflected its extraordinary provenance.

A set of the monumental 'Description de l’Égypte…' in its specially made case was sold last month in a US sale.

Early magazine runs brought some unexpectedly high prices in the latest of the regular golfing literature sales held by a Californian saleroom.

Bid to a much higher than expected $23,000 (£17,970) in a Massachusetts auction was the signed photograph of Marie Curie shown here.

A mixed-discipline summer estates sale to be held by Neal Auction Company in New Orleans on June 22-23 will include this pair of 70oz, silver-gilt Edwardian figural tazzae by Elkington & Co marked for Birmingham 1907 with removable glass bowls.

Chicago-headquartered US saleroom Hindman, formerly Leslie Hindman Auctioneers, has an ambitious agenda that goes beyond its recent rebrand, as its CEO Thomas Galbraith tells ATG.

Born in Mount Kisco, New York, Peter Chinni (1928-2019) studied painting and portraiture at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome.

This c.1900 French automaton is included in the next sale held by Chicago saleroom Potter & Potter specialist auction house of magic props and memorabilia.

Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975) was an American artist whose oeuvre – paintings, murals and lithographs – was at the forefront of the Regionalist movement.

Sporting a torn and defective but rarely seen dust jacket, a 1911, first American printing of Gaston Leroux’s 'The Phantom of the Opera' sold for $10,000 (£7750) in a recent New York sale.