Modigliani Nude Breaks Records at Christie’s

Our daily round-up of news from the art world

Modigliani Nude Fetches Second Highest Price for any Work at Auction | Amedeo Modigliani’s Nu Couché has broken the auction record for the artist’s work, fetching over $170 million after a lengthy bidding battle at Christie’s New York yesterday. After Picasso’s Les Femmes d’Alger (Version ‘O’), which sold for $179 million earlier this year, the Modigliani fetched the highest price for a work of art ever recorded at auction. Another artist’s record was achieved for a work by Roy Lichtenstein, whose Nurse went for $95 million. Overall, the sale brought in $491.4 million, beating its low estimate of $438.9 million, with 71 per cent of lots sold.

Van Dyck Portrait Allocated to Bowes Museum | A Van Dyck portrait from the collection of the Duke of Northumberland that was given to the nation in lieu of inheritance tax has been allocated to County Durham’s Bowes Museum by Arts Council England. The allocation is appropriate: the Bowes already holds another Van Dyck portrait of the same sitter, the artist’s friend Olivia Porter.

New Gallery for Spanish Art to Open at Auckland Castle | More good news from County Durham. A major new space for the study and display of Spanish art is to open at Auckland Castle in 2018. The gallery will cover all aspects of Spanish art from Medieval times to the late 20th-century, but will focus on the Spanish Golden Age. The new gallery forms part of and ambitious expansion programme for the Auckland Castle Trust.

Musée Maillol to Reopen in 2016 | Paris’s Musée Maillol, which closed in February after the company that managed it filed for bankruptcy, is to reopen in September 2016, reports Le Monde. The running of the museum, which was founded in 1995, will be taken over by Culturespaces, which already manages the Musée Jacquemart-André.

Antony Gormley & Douglas Jennings Share PMSA Marsh Award | Antony Gormley and Douglas Jennings have been jointly awarded the 10th PMSA Marsh Award for public sculpture. Jennings was nominated for his statue of Squadron Leader Mahinder Singh Pujji in Gravesend, while Gormley was picked for his Room at a Mayfair hotel.

Ernst Fuchs (1930–2015) | Ernst Fuchs, who co-founded the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism has died at the age of 85. Fuchs, who was known for his distinctive dress sense, painted from a young age and also wrote several books on art, reports the BBC.