If you took a jazz-history course before 2000 or so, you almost certainly listened to The Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz. Long out of print, the Collection has finally been supplanted
Swing States
Tag Archives: collection
Layman-turned-relics hunter rescues China’s antiquities
Searching through the rubble of demolition sites across the 800-year-old capital of China, Li Songtang has unearthed a treasure trove of ancient relics. They include gate piers depicting Mongolians and the Han Chinese during the Yuan dynasty, a Buddhist carving that is more than 1,000 years old, and a Ming dynasty marble fish water tank. Li Songtang is neither museum curator nor antiques expert, but an ordinary man who did not want to see China’s rich history lost to modernization during the late 1970s.
China protest overshadows $470M YSL auction
China has criticized Christie’s auction of two Qing dynasty bronzes looted by invading French and British forces in 1860, saying the sale would hurt the auction house.
YSL auction of a lifetime set to fetch $380M
A three-day auction of art and furnishings that belonged to the late fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent is seeing sale prices far exceeding estimates, with dollar amounts almost as spectacular as the range of items being sold. A list of artwork already sold in the Monday-to-Wednesday auction in Paris shows pieces from Matisse to Brancusi fetching tens of millions of dollars, according to the Web site of Christie’s, the auction house that is holding the sale. The largest amount so far was €35,905,000 ($45,264,579), the price realized for French Impressionist Henri Matisse’s painting “Les coucous, tapis bleu et rose.” That was more than double Christie’s estimate of €12 to 18 million ($15,526,268 and $23,289,403)