Kelly Crow
speaker
104 appearances
4 recordings
2 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard 14 May
Kelly Crow’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 1.
Appearances
And like, they're just like, you do get the feeling that they're still just sort of
testing the field of what do the younger buyers want and how kooky do they want to be.
You're going to see more sports memorabilia coming into these big auctions.
I feel like there's sort of a quirkiness that comes with the younger group, which honestly, I'm fine.
Let's mix it up.
It doesn't all have to be Rothko all the time.
Our colleague Kelly Crow covers the art market. And last week was a big one for her. It was auction week in New York.
Auction Week showcases the biggest art sales. It's a chance for art watchers like Kelly to see which artists are hot and what kind of eye-popping prices their work can command. And what was the hottest piece up for sale this auction week?
Collectors and curators consider the bust a masterpiece. And Kelly was in the room when it went up for sale at the auction house Sotheby's New York headquarters.
What happened next was unlike anything Kelly's seen at an auction for decades.
Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Annie Minoff. It's Monday, May 19th. Coming up on the show, an auction night shocker and what it says about the art market right now.
The Giacometti bust that went up for auction last week is called Grand Tête Mance, or Large Thin Head. It's a bronze sculpture about two feet high of a man's head and shoulders, and it's called Large Thin Head for a reason.
The creator of the piece is Alberto Giacometti, a Swiss-Italian sculptor whose work reflects the horrors of World War II. He sculpted Large Thin Head in the post-war period in 1954.
Giacometti is one of the most important sculptors of the 20th century, and collectors pay big money for his work. Other casts of the bust have sold for over $50 million, and another Giacometti masterpiece, Pointing Man, sold for over $140 million about a decade ago. All of which is to say, when this particular bust came up for auction, it was an event, and Sotheby's pulled out all the stops.
This is his magnum opus of what man is, of what Diego is, of what humanity is.
You get that duality. You get that it's both of this world, but also at the same time, it's transcendent.
I mean, they were laying it on pretty thick.
But a public auction does present a risk. What if the piece doesn't sell? To get around that, auction houses like Sotheby's will often find what's called a guarantor, somebody willing to buy the piece for an undisclosed price just in case no one steps up during the auction. In exchange for that guarantee, Sotheby's will typically take a bigger cut of the sale price.
But in this case, the seller didn't want to guarantor. Large Thin Head was being sold by a foundation tied to the late real estate tycoon Sheldon Solo. And the Solo family was feeling confident.
Which brings us to Tuesday night and that packed auction room. The auctioneer started the bidding at $59 million.
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